The biker visits

We had a friend of my dad's, also his ex-business partner come stay with us for a few days. Geoff decided his 60's were the time for some serious adventure, so shipped his motorbike over to Buenos Aires, and has since travelled down to the tip of South America, now making his way up to Canada.
Was good to have him stay at our's for a couple of nights. We showed him some local Loja sights and John took him out for a bolon de verde and other tasty treats.
The kids enjoyed having him stay, and also the games on the ipad!

Out at Parque Jipiro on a busy Sunday afternoon

Is this their future mode of transport?!

The visit to the birds

Sometimes weird things just happen, and it happens wherever, whenever without expecting it.
And so yesterday I was walking home with Mattias and Annalise from buying milk and the kids stopped in front of a house up the road from us to gaze into the garden. There aren't that many front gardens to gaze into as mostly you meet concrete walls protecting privacy of homes.
This particular house had a car reversing out, so we stood gazing into the garden for a while longer to avoid getting squished by the car. The lady driving the car then proceeded to get out and ask Mattias and Annalise if they wanted to see some birds. Sure, why not.
So inside her house we go, to a little atrium full of tiny budgies. The kids are happy as ever to see something new. There were about 20 birds in this little nook, with little nests tucked into the wall and a tree for them to perch on. The kids glued their faces to the glass in fascination. And then the lady said she had to go to work but that we could stay as long as we wanted, go through the house, and the back garden, her cleaning guy would be around, and off she went! Weird! So we watched the birds for a while, checked out the house and back garden and then told the cleaning guy we were off. He was surprised, 'already?'. Not sure what else we would have done...but off we went anyways with the song of the cheep cheep in our heads and a little bit more of our neighbourhood known!

Car accident

Living in another country always provides challenges. Just the other day as I heard the beep of a horn and then a screech followed by a the contact of metal between two cars, it made me think again of the process of having an accident.

As any local here will do, I grabbed the camera and ran outside (it was while I was working on the garden for those who have seen my facebook post). 

This is at 10:23am

After this initial incident comes the discussion as to who is at fault or come to some sort of agreement between the two drivers. 

The problem with hitting a taxi is that it means that there will generally be many other taxis in the area real soon. I think that this brought many family members of the other driver, as soon there were heaps of cars in the area.

Not long after this the discussions began. As you will notice the Police came, and they took some photos, however were soon off to the side to let the two parties negotiate the incident. 

The thing with an incident like this is that if you car gets taken to the police impound, you have to work very hard to get it back in one piece and in fact it may never be given back. The solution, and that which even the police themselves suggest is that there is some agreement between parties and they can stay out of the incident altogether. If there is no resolution then the Police will take the cars away.

As you can see, there was agreement between the two parties here, the police left, the taxi left and the last car was towed away by one of their friend's ute. 

A great end to an unfortunate incident.