The move begins

It is nearly time to move out of the barrio and into the campo, the countryside. In order to save me being stressed, my husband said that he would be in charge of everything. He is currently doing renovations on the house we are moving to, basic things like building walls, sorting electricity and water, sticking the roof on and planting trees in the garden. He is also slowly moving furniture in there. He has taken control of absolutely everything, including decorating. I had asked him to think carefully about the cats and dogs, to try and make sure they were kept separate.
He told me not to worry as he had installed cat flaps – I was intrigued as I had never seen them on sale here. Here is his cat flap.

As the outside wall is high up, he has built steps for the cats.

Now I know that some people are going to shake their heads at my new cat flap but it really makes me smile, and I know that every morning when I get up and am making the coffee I will laugh at it, starting the day off on the right note.

I asked for a vegetable patch too and was expecting one like England, a sort of square or rectangular area with different veg planted in rows, each seed 4 inches apart, with the seed packet on a little stick at the end. I don't quite have that. I have palm trees with seeds scattered around the bases. Cauliflower, carrots, peppers, chillis and even parsnips.

Cauliflower already growing. You can see the packet stuck in the tree

And a couple of days ago half of our furniture moved into the new house.

Well I should say it left this house. No idea if it all arrived or fell off en route.

Whilst all of this chaos is going on in the campo, life goes on as normal for me in the barrio.

I went with Chivirico to the bank a couple of days ago for him to deposit 147 pesos he had saved up. When I looked at his bank book I saw that he had interest – 5 pesos, so I explained to him that the more money he had in the bank, the more money the bank would give him. Having thanked the cashier for giving him the interest, he went very quiet as we walked home and then disappeared for the rest of the day.

He reappeared in the early evening with a contraption he had made using some part from his Dad’s motorbike as a wheel and informed me that he wanted to make as much money as possible so that the bank would give him more interest. His plan is to buy and deliver 5 gallon water bottles which we all use as drinking water and which are very heavy.

His ‘wheelbarrow’ has been specially designed to carry the 5 gallon bottles of water. He will collect your bottle from the colmado and deliver it to your home for a 5 pesos delivery charge.

No idea what his next money spinning idea will be.