The Update #32 – Drama, Drama, Drama

Yes, that was quite a cliffhanger, it was obviously a little dramatic of us. But drama is the word of this week, it was a rollercoaster but luckily I can tell you that it feels a lot better now.

The last thing we ended with last time was the discovery of corona in the group. At that time there were two cases of which I had treated one, the two people that tested positive have been here a lot in the Finca but at least they did not stay here at the Finca. However, two days later, two people out of 12 here at the Finca tested positive as well, of which I also gave 1 a sports massage and had therefore been in direct contact with them again. Besides the fact that we live together with them here on the Finca. We woke up that morning with a sore throat and headache so we took a big breath and completely surrendered to the fact that there was no escaping it, we were sure we would get sick too. We’ll give it away, it’s now almost a week later and we haven’t gotten sick yet… We are hopeful that it will stay that way, bravo to our immune system.

We have locked the positivos, as we call them, in the apartment below and put food in front of the door. It is very nice that they can quarantine separately there. We catered for a few more days for the Finca on the other side and of course for the guests here. But eventually, the guests left at the other Finca so our work also changed back to normal. That is all about the corona situation here in the Finca. But in the meantime, we also had bad corona news from home. Lon’s parents are so connected to her that it wasn’t Lon who got it but they got it instead of her! Amazing how that works! Fortunately, they are getting through it reasonably well and things are getting a little better every day…

The next sad thing that happened is that the hosts of the Finca broke off their relationship. We were aware that there were problems, but the break came very suddenly and unexpectedly, which of course caused a lot of sadness here in the house. There is also a horse who is already 32 years old and who was limping and could hardly stand on his hooves, so there was a fear that they would have to put the horse down. Also, Chance, one of the dogs, ran away because he wanted to escape his bath. He saw that Lon was already washing Panda so he seized his chance to escape before it was too late. After driving around for a long time we finally found him again and he still had to take a bath the next day. And after a good intervention by the blacksmith, the horse seems to be doing better now.. Finally, our new best friend Eva left for the Netherlands… Sigh… What a week…

But now that we’re talking about Eva… We cannot just go over her leaving, this new friendship should be toasted and at least written a love serenade about it. Because it was so much fun and special to meet each other so far away from home, while we don’t live more than 5 minutes away from each other’s home. We’ve had so many fun encounters on this trip and our meeting with Eva is one to frame and one to hold onto hard and long. The three of us clicked right away and we laughed so much together. Being with her felt like coming home. Dear Eva, we are going to miss you terribly but we’ll see each other again soon!

Something completely different, something very nice actually, but certainly something that has kept us very busy in the past week is whether we wanted to adopt Panda, the dog. It came up as a joke but then suddenly our host Amanda got serious and said that she’d already thought about it a few times and that looking at Panda’s needs she thought he would be in a better place with us. Especially because Panda lives for adventure and because things don’t always go well between Panda and Chance. They’ve fought quite a few times and Chance is getting older and can no longer defend himself well, causing Panda to injure him in those fights. They are separate and most of the time, the sweetest dogs you can imagine but the combination between them is just not perfect. So for the past week, we’ve been going up and down where one minute we’re 100% sure we can’t imagine life without Panda, and the next we’re convinced it just really doesn’t fit the journey that we want to make now. Well, we’ve wanted a dog for so long, we’ve had an idea for so long about what kind of dog we would like to have and Panda meets all our requirements … We have not made a decision and will not decide for the time being, because it is a very big decision that we take very seriously. In any case, we will exchange Eva on our next trips on the island for Panda, to experience what that is like. And we’ll see from there.

Speaking of trips, despite everything, we have not been sitting still in the past week. We have again discovered beautiful new beaches where an abandoned and never used leprosy quarantine village from the early 1900s could be viewed at one beach. Jap had a very successful surf afternoon. We drank a few barraquitos again at our favorite bar, we only have to walk in and the waitress knows exactly what we want: a normal barraquito for Jap, for Lon and Eva one without liqueur and Eva’s also decaf, haha. And we have had a nice closing road trip with Eva across the island created. During our road trip, we went to Masca with Eva and enjoyed the tapas and the view on the terrace. Then we did the tour around the Chinyero volcano again with her because we were so impressed by that walk and wanted to show it to her. In the evening we camped at the start of the walk, I made a nice soup and we played wonderful games in the van. Eva is already getting used to sleeping in the front seats and gave it a 6.5/10, not bad right? The next day we drove to Barranco de Los Cochinos for a walk to a waterfall under which you could swim. But before we started that walk, Lon was still baking pancakes in the van! It was a fun and adventurous walk, completely different from the other walks we had done before. The waterfall was fairly dry so we couldn’t swim, but it was still very beautiful green and we still had a lot of fun and exercise. In the evening we continue that movement with Salsa dancing in the kitchen with the rest of our crazy finca family.

That was it again for this week.

Lots of love,

Jap and Lon

Spendings of the Week

Budget per day €54 and per week €378 and per month €1700