January 29,

We were up and around a bit later than normal because we stayed up watching some Star Wars stuff last night. Then we made our Javas and breakfast of yogurt and a yellow watermelon later. We did a load of laundry – our sheets. Gonna be hot today, I noticed this while we were sitting on our balcony.

I blogged as Jeff read, and went to the store for some bread. We had some leftover pot roast stew, baguette and wine for lunch. We did a bit more planning, listened to music and just hung out in our air-con. apartment! The sheets were dry in no time flat, as they were in the non air-con’d office. For supper we had veggies: cucumber, red pepper, and tomatoes. Then we watched the movie Rogue One with popcorn.

     January 30,

Up and about by 0800. We had our Javas and breakfast of French toast and yogurt. The day was cloud covered and coolish. So we decided to head out for a walkabout around 1000.

We walked to the larger Coto Grocery store. It is 2.7 km (1.7 miles) away. We found our essentials and checked out. There were quite a few shoppers in line, checking out. We could not figure out why there were so many people at 1100 on a Friday. Maybe payday, maybe the end of the month?? Questions? Anyway we finally made it through and walked back home, as we did not have that much to carry.

We arrived back and did another load of laundry. We have to go up on the seventh floor to our washing machine. The host has an extension cord we take up, plug in to use the machine. It works, at least we have access to a machine. I will mention here the elevator we have is very old school. You push the button to call for it- nothing different there. When it arrives you open a metal accordion door, then the other metal accordion door. You get in and then close both doors. You can see through the doors! It works well, but only holds three people. We have only been deterred once, because of this limited space.

Anyway, we had the last of the watermelon for lunch, with lots of water – the clouds were not blocking the sun at this time, so it was hotter on the walk home. We cooled off and put out our newly washed clothes on the line. The afternoon was relaxing until around 1600, when a thunderstorm moved in with a significant wind burst, opening our doors! It was raining. So we were frantically closing the doors and windows. Jeff noticed the second bedroom window was dripping – leaking water onto the floor. So Jeff texted our host, as I grabbed the mop. Then somewhere during this time, it started hailing – cornnut-sized this time. Our co-host texted us. It seemed there was a huge storm – the entire province affected and even the International Crossing into Chile was closed due to it! Around 1615 the window stopped leaking and the wind died down, but the rain continued until around 1700. We lost power once very briefly during this time as well.

Around 1730 we made some tomato sauce based salami pasta, with our old curry seasoning that we made in Sri Lanka. It’s hard to believe we still have some. (We did make a lot at Rosie’s place.) We will donate what little is left here. We also had one of the wines that we had liked from our tasting a few days ago. After supper we watched the original Star Wars movie (from 1977) which is considered Episode #4 now. Then called it a day.