On Saturday morning, the 16th, we heard a loud "BANG!" and the power immediately went out. Emily and I (along with the property owners) looked around for the cause of the failure and it appeared to be on the main line running along the highway. The owners put in a call to the power utility requesting service, but no one was available.
The utility offices are closed on Sunday, so the calls started again on Monday. With the assistance of our housekeeper (it's best if an Ecuadorian makes these types of calls), we were told that someone would be out to look at the problem. When? They didn't know.
At 10:30p, a pickup pulled up next to the utility pole that feeds service to this property. One of the guys climbed up a ladder (about 25 feet) and found a faulty switch/insulator device. They had it replaced within an hour, but that didn't solve the problem. They blamed it on the transformer on the spur line that feeds the houses. After some discussions and skepticism, it was decided to replace the transformer.
(Why did they wait until Monday night to come out? One of the line workers told us that Gringos are low on the priority list when it comes to getting service. If it had been an Ecuadorian house, the utility company likely would have been here on Saturday.)
We were told that the new transformer would arrive on Friday, the 22nd. In the meantime, Emily and I would load up our computers and phones once each day and head to a local restaurant to recharge and use the WiFi. A special thanks to Jaibel at Patacon Pisao in Puerto Lopez and the Hotel Montanita (in Montanita, of course) for providing services.
We also adapted to living without electricity. The stove and oven are gas, so cooking was no problem. Candles and a kerosene hurricane lamp worked for lights:
The property is on city water, so no pumps are necessary for getting water or using the toilet. The only drawback: the shower. Since it's a suicide shower with the electric shower head, we had no hot water for showering. No fun! We did get caught up on our Kindle reading, however:
(To be fair, the property owner did have a generator and offered run an extension cord over to our cottage. I thought it would be good practice to go without, however; infrastructure in Ecuador is still developing in most areas, and we likely won't have power available when we start building our place.)
Thursday night at 9:00p, four guys showed up in a pickup with the new transformer!
Here comes the interesting part: installation. First, the old one had to be removed. One of the guys climbed up a ladder (about 30 feet), hooked up a block and tackle pulley and unbolted the old one:
(Sorry about the water spots on the camera lens.) Once it was down, they hooked up the new one to the same system:
This transformer is filled with oil and weighs about 450 pounds, way to heavy to lift by hand. Once it was tied up to the pulley, the other end of the rope was tied to the truck through a lateral pulley:
Watch your toes, dude!
A friend of mine was commenting once on his zip-lining adventure. Being a critical thinker, he looked at the setup and thought, "I wonder how many single points of failure there are in this system". The same thought occurred to me here: old pulley, a single rope for lifting, knot failure, welded hooks on the transformer, no secondary/safety line, etc. No problem - that's Ecuador!
Once it was halfway up, the rope was untied so that the pickup could back up and the rope could be reattached:
The guy on the ladder bolted the new unit in place, made the connections and, at 11:00p, the lights came back on! Thanks guys - drive home safely!
No more excuses for me. It's time to finish organizing the pictures and notes from our Atacames trip and find our new home!
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