Getting Closer!

My time here is growing short….again! I am leaving for Ecuador on or about May 14. I’m going to Phoenix first, and my flight leaves on May 17. I will need to get a PCR Covid test the day before. At this time I do not know how I will get to Phoenix, as I will be selling my car. As a last resort I think I could just do all the car transfer paperwork a day or so ahead of time and drive to the Greyhound station in Show Low, leaving the car there for the buyers to pick up. The Greyhound takes 6 hours (twice as long as by car, because it goes through Flagstaff first) and leaves at 6:30 a.m. It costs $70. There is a possibility that I can get a ride with a neighbor who goes to Phoenix monthly, if the timing works out.

I am excited to go to Ecuador but sad to be leaving my tiny house, I really do love it. I am now NOT the owner! We signed the purchase agreement last Friday, but I retain a Life Estate Deed so I can come back here and live in the house any time I need or want.

My return flight from Ecuador is on August 8. I have promised to dogsit for friends in Mesa from August 10-15. So I’d be ready to fly somewhere else on August 17.

I’ve been agonizing over where to go after Ecuador, someplace safe from Putin (that would mean NOT a NATO member country!) and cheap. I narrowed it down to Lake Chapala in Mexico, Tunisia or Morocco. The problem with Mexico is that they have not been granting Tourist Cards for longer than 30 days lately, so that would be a waste of money to fly down there for such a short period of time. I guess if you want to stay long term, they really want you to apply for Residency, for which I can’t qualify. Mexico requires a monthly income of at least $2413 a month, and my income is WAY below that.

But I’ve decided that if things are still the way they are in Europe, if Putin is not actively threatening the NATO countries, that I will just go ahead and go to Albania when I return from Ecuador. If it gets scary, I can make a run for Tunisia for under $200 airfare. I am hoping to make a 2-3 week stopoff in Detroit en route, to visit with my old childhood and school friends. Strangely, it costs several hundred dollars more to fly to Albania from Detroit as it does from Phoenix, even though it’s a couple thousand miles shorter trip! I can’t understand how the airlines figure their fares.

I’ve got most everything shipshape here, so there’s not a lot to do before I go. At the last minute I’ll have to stash the 5 propane tanks, two solar panels, two ladders and the house heater in the storage shed. Then there won’t be much of anything laying around that’s worth stealing.

It’s the windy season again. It usually goes from March to June but started a little late this year. Last night we had 75 mph wind gusts and the house was shaking a lot but thank goodness it’s been anchored well. Today it’s only 55 mph wind but it’s still too ugly to do much of anything outside. A normal day in windy season is winds around 30-35 mph, which the weather forecast calls a “breezy” day. I’m going to have a big job cleaning up when the wind settles down, things have blown away that have never been bothered before, like all the flowers out of my cute flowerboxes, a stack of foam insulation panels that had two ladders and some patio stones weighing it down, and lots of other stuff. I’ll have to go crawling around under the trees to retrieve a lot of it. Uggg!