The Road Goes Ever On and On….

A lot has happened, or rather not happened, since I last posted a week and a half ago.

I got as far as arranging for an inspection of the second apartment I saw in Saint-Etienne. By then I had just two business days left in Saint-Etienne. I hadn’t heard from the guy who was supposed to show me three apartments Friday afternoon. Or Enzo, the guy who showed me the first apartment in Saint-Etienne, who had told me there was another to see.

I was feeling a lot of pressure. Pressure, I realised, that I was putting on myself. Why was I so invested in the idea of living in Europe? I knew why. Cuenca was painful. But I also was avoiding the stark truth. Which is, that if I left Cuenca for France or Spain, or Portugal or anywhere in Europe where I would want to live, my finances would be so tight that I would be unable to afford to engage in the very activities I wanted to move to Europe for.

Go back to Cuenca and live cheaply and well and travel now and then? Leaving aside the issue of my emotional and mental state in Cuenca, it’s a long way from there to anywhere. The last two trips I’ve made have brought my age home to me. Yes, I’m still doing great for a 71 year old person. But that will not last. I just read an article in Cuenca Highlife about a study that said four out of five sidewalks and streets in Cuenca are not accessible for people with mobility issues ranging from a cane to a wheelchair.

I got way too caught up in that dilemma. Like it had to be resolved right then.

Reframe the question and suddenly it’s a lot clearer.

I woke up the morning of the apartment inspection thinking, when am I happiest, or most content at least? When am I fully engaged in the world and not wallowing inside my own head?

The answer came immediately – when I am away. When I am traveling. When I am seeing and experiencing new things. When I am meeting new people.

So why was I so set on settling somewhere for the rest of my life? Wherever I end up, I know it has to be somewhere I can age in place. But this thought process made me realize, at least, that I was nowhere near ready to plunk down a good part of my ever diminishing capital buying a French condo that needs work and tying myself up so that I couldn’t travel.

I cancelled the home inspection, and resolved to stop looking at real estate websites. I immediately felt lighter in spirit. I think my gut had actually been trying to tell me that this was a bridge too far.

I allowed myself to just be a tourist for the rest of my stay in beautiful Saint-Etienne. I went off to the Museum of Modern Art.

There was a really powerful exhibition about and by women artists, which started with posters in support of the women of Iran.

I saw two terrific works by Kiki Smith. This one I found particulary moving, being as I am an old woman now.

The detail in the hands and feet in this one.

And of course, the cat.

Some, I did not understand at all.

And this one reminded me of some of the ugly wallpaper I had seen while apartment hunting.

I visited the incredible indoor market, which was one of only two in France to rank among the top 50 in the world according to some recent survey.

I had some good meals. I generally gave myself a rest from existential angst until I return to Cuenca on April 13th.

What then about the immediate future?

I still have my one way Business Class ticket between Quito and Madrid for May 14th. I had thought of cashing it in, but decided I would go back to Europe, do some more traveling and defer any big decisions until I was either ready to settle in one place again (for a while?) or couldn’t travel any longer because of money or physical or mental deterioration.

In the meantime, the world’s a big place, full of possibilities.

Call me Carmen Sandiego.

My first thought was to get an Airbnb. There’s no doubt that housesitting does tie you down some. I’d wait out the rainy and cold weather months in Cuenca (June, July and August). Maybe I’d go back to Cuenca via Canada, in late October for Thanksgiving.

But Airbnbs are costly, especially in the summer months, when I would be in Europe. It’s hard to find anything, anywhere for under 3k a month and most are 4k to 5k.

My Irish friends invited me to come and stay with them, but I don’t like to outstay my welcome. At some point I will almost certainly go back, because I love them and Ireland. But I tabled that option for later.

There was also still the problem of my Cuenca rental house, full of my possessions.

Give up the house? The lease ends next month. Sell the possessions? Or ask my landlord to go month to month and treat the house as a rather pricey storage unit while I travel, which is what I have done these last two trips.

I don’t think I have ever described this house on any public forum. It’s a smallish, beautiful, bright house, on three levels, built into the side of a hill. It has three bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms and terrific views.

I pay $350 US per month (about $470 CDN). It is fifteen or twenty minutes from Baños where I was swimming three times per week. Five minutes from the bus which takes me to Centro in 30 minutes or so.

There are spectacular views from the kitchen and where my desk is parked.

The down side to those views is that the house is half way up a very steep hill, and the road is not paved. The house has no number. Google maps and WhatsApp both show the house several blocks south of where it is, for reasons known only to the tech gods.

In other words, it’s hard to find the first time you go there. And it’s hard to walk up that hill, especially when the road is muddy. There is no parking. It amazes me that school buses and garbage trucks get up and down there.

If I sell my stuff, how do I tell people where to come for the sale? Where do the crowds park? But if I don’t sell my stuff, I’m paying rent, internet, water and electricity on a house I intend not to occupy for a good part of the year.

But I can’t see leaving it empty.

That means housesitters. That’s fine for shorter periods, but something in me revolts at paying rent and expenses on a house for ten months out of a year, for someone else to live in.

I can hear everyone thinking, why don’t you get a storage unit? Well, I had researched this possibility on other occasions, and come up with only one or two private individuals who rent their garages or spare rooms as storage. I kept the idea in my back pocket though.

After spending a few hours on Airbnb, I asked myself why exactly it was that I had set my face against housesitting. I have been to most places in the world I wanted to go as a tourist and experienced a lot of them in depth. At the same time, some of my most enjoyable housesits were very low key. If what I am looking for now is less wow factor and more ‘being away’ experiences without too much stress, why not housesitting?

I went back on Trusted Housesitters (TH). The first thing I saw was a housesit in May and early June in Lymington in the UK. I had done a housesit there in May 2016, as it happens and loved the town.

It is on the south coast, opposite the Isle of Wight. The Georgian and Tudor architecture is well preserved and it is full of great walks, and great cafés and restaurants.

The gardens were gorgeous.

Tea rooms too.

I applied. Then saw another listing in Lymington, the dates of which dovetailed almost exactly with the first one. I applied. Both sets of homeowners got back to me right away and took me on board.

I can see myself sitting in other lovely gardens in Lymington, with cuddly dogs lying near me, as I enjoy a glass of wine in the long summer twilights. A way to be out of the usual while still in familiar surroundings. And really, to speak my own language for a while will be a relief.

Mid-May to July 2nd, sorted.

I then looked for another sit to take me through the period between when I arrive in Madrid and when I go to the first Lymington housesit. I found one almost right away, not too far north of London.

One of the Lymington homeowners is also away from the end of August to mid-September. At their request, I agreed to do that sit as well.

At the same time, I advertised on TH for a housesitter for myself from May 13 to October 20. I said I would be wiling to split it into two portions if people didn’t want to do the whole five months. If you stay longer than three months, you have to buy an extended visa.

For reasons which, as usual, make no sense to me, TH has instituted a practice of pausing listings once there are five applicants. As an applicant myself, this is annoying. The interesting housesits in out of the way places or big cities like London or Paris, attract many applicants. You have to keep checking and apply as soon as you see anything remotely interesting.

As a person looking for a housesitter in a popular location, it is really, really annoying. Cuenca is one of those places that is on the radar of a lot of housesitters. As soon as my listing was live, I had five applicants. Two of the five were along the lines of “Cuenca! Cuenca! I’ve wanted to go to Cuenca for so long! I can’t do your dates, but please keep me in mind in future.” Two more said they could come, but when I took the precaution of checking the online calendar TH keeps for each sitter, they were already booked for part of the time. I figured if they took my sit, they’d be ditching someone that they had already made a commitment to. Who wants that kind of person?

So I had to keep sorting through applications and dismissing the useless ones every twenty minutes in order to get more applicants who were remotely suitable. Very frustrating.

I finally managed a video call with a young woman who I thought was great. As we were talking, she asked about flights.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. A few weeks ago I’d read that the airport in Cuenca is closing for three months, possibly as early as May 16th – two days after I am scheduled to leave. I had vaguely kept that in the back of my mind while thinking about my own travel plans, but had forgotten that it would affect housesitters in Cuenca as well. I really am getting old and dull.

A scheduled three months job in Cuenca can easily turn to six months or even a year. Already I’m reading the contract is actually for seven months.

And the business owners are up in arms, especially those engaged in the tourist industry. They want the works put off until who knows when and the new mayor says he has no choice but to sign the contract and chaos is looming, aaaahhhhh!!

Meanwhile, this is reported this morning: “In a statement last week, Latam said it is exploring adding flights from Cuenca to several cities in Peru. “In the past, flights operated between Piura, Chiclayo, Lima, Cusco and Cuenca and we plan to resume one of these routes in the near future,” the airline said. It noted that Cuenca’s Mariscal La Mar Airport received international certification in January.”

So it finally gets certified for international flights – let’s close it for three to seven months! Makes total sense, right???

You may have read about the earthquake March 19th, which was about 170 kms west of Cuenca. Usually the most we get from earthquakes is swinging light fixtures and maybe some broken crockery. This one resulted in the destruction of some two dozen houses, one of which fell on a passing car and killed a person.

It also caused widespread rockslides on the road between Cuenca and Guayaquil, which has one of only two international airports in Ecuador. That trip by road takes about three hours or so. When it is closed, which it frequently is, the alternative route takes about ten hours. Likewise, if you have to drive to Quito rather than fly, you’re looking at ten hours.

I figured this would make the prospect of the housesit considerably less attractive to people.

It also makes me understand how cut off Cuenca is without its airport.

Storage of any kind started looking better and better. I went on Gringo Post (which is the online source for most things in Cuenca) and searched. Only one woman was advertising, the same woman that had been advertising every time I had looked before.

I sent her an email, as well as reaching out to some of my friends. I submitted my own ad for Gringo Post on Saturday, which meant it would not appear until Monday.

Barbi, the storage lady, got back to me. As we messaged back and forth, her prices kept going up. She assured me that there was little or no storage to be had in Cuenca, which is what I had thought from my online research. I agreed to pay her for six months in advance, cash. I conscripted a friend to accept an E-transfer and go to Barbi’s house with the cash.

Meanwhile, another friend said I could rent her spare bedroom. The friend who was taking the cash over contacted another mutual friend and determined her son has a bedroom I could rent. Another friend offered space, and contacted our former mutual gardener who got in touch about renting me his space.

The transfer went through, sort of, but my friend can’t access it because it would go to a bank she has no connection with. So I’ve got a fair bit of money in limbo with a transfer my friend can’t access and I can’t cancel. She said the bank’s message said it would expire April 23 and we both assume it will come back to me.

A problem for another day.

The ad appeared on Monday. I have received 21 offers of space at the price I stipulated ($75-$100 US per month, depending on the size of the space). Offers are still coming in. Two of those offers are from actual storage companies. Why couldn’t I find them online?

So apparently it’s not that there is no storage space in Cuenca. It’s that only Barbi advertises.

By then, I was getting packed up to come to my housesit in Vienna. I was actually happy to leave France, which are not words I ever thought I would say. Protests were getting larger and larger and more and more violent.

This is what I found in the streets near me in Saint-Etienne, the morning after the biggest protest. I can only imagine what Paris looked like.

I’m worryingly thinking of post-WW I Germany. The political centre party was ineffective and people protested and scorned it. Then it became an existential struggle between the far right and far left. What will become of France if the centre cannot hold?

It was smooth sailing to Vienna. I stayed in a hotel that night as the home I am housesitting for is only a studio and there was no room for me. That was fine. I saw a few sights.

Super cute display of teddies on one window.

And Easter goodies beginning to appear.

I had a terrific dinner and cocktails in central Vienna.

Look at the prices though – 16€. That’s $24 Canadian for a cocktail. See why I concluded I can’t afford cocktails and the other fine things in life if I move to Europe?

Oh, just in case you’re wondering if I drank my dinner, I also had an excellent steak and potatoes.

Just before I checked out of my hotel the next morning, I had a quick look at TH. There was a housesit in Tanzania, Dar es Salaam for July 8 to Aug. 10.

She had four applicants already and the fifth was probably typing as I looked. I wasn’t at all ready to think about whether I actually wanted to go to Dar es Salaam, but I did a quick application to hold my place.

I figured I didn’t have much chance, but why not?

I proceeded to my housesit. I learned in the process that the river in the historic centre, which I had always thought was the Danube when I was here before, is not the Danube at all. My old geography teacher would be annoyed.

The housesit is about five kms from the historic part, and is right next to the Danube.

That’s a swan’s butt in the foreground. There are many of them.

The owner is a warm and welcoming person. Her tiny studio apartment is very well organized, warm and comfortable, and even has a back yard. It is a two minute walk to a huge linear park area along the Danube with a dog park and lots of paved paths.

You can easily walk an hour without coming to the end of it.

Daffodils and forsythia are out.

The two Labrador retrievers are incredible – calm, obedient, friendly. So well trained they both walk off lead. They show no interest in chasing bikes or skateboards or cars or kids or anything. Well, okay, one of them found a mouse under a grating a while back apparently, and she does live in hope. They’re not even that terribly interested in other dogs.

But no dog or person is perfect. They are interested in eating anything they can get, so they wear muzzles and even with that, they try.

To my surprise, Tuesday, after my homeowner left and I got online, there was a message from the Africa lady, Vicky. We set up a call for the next morning.

She is German, and moved to Tanzania two years ago. She doesn’t actually live in Dar es Salaam, but in a gated compound, a fifteen minute walk from a village. The two dogs seemed pretty calm when we were talking. She turned her phone around and showed me the house and garden.

Both are huge. The house is a little run down, as is the furniture.

It’s a furnished rental. I get it and it doesn’t bother me at all.

But the garden is fabulous. She has a gardener every day.

And best of all, she’s 200 metres from the white sand beaches of the Indian Ocean. There is a gate in the backyard that gives access. The dogs love to be walked there. They chase crabs.

She offered it to me. This was her first time on TH. Leaving her dogs, she was pretty anxious to have someone experienced.

After having satisfied myself that the internet was okay and that I could get food in the village with a fifteen minute walk, I decided to take it. Why not? My days of lengthy, hard air travel are undoubtedly limited. If this lady has lived there comfortably for two years, why not me? Broaden my horizons while dipping a toe – or maybe swimming?- in the Indian Ocean.

There are six days between leaving Lymington and starting the African sit. And there are 18 days before I have to be back in Lymington.

I’ve started looking at safaris…..

But excuse me now, I have to go start brushing up on my swahili.