We had a wonderful time last night with Sandra Baquero, Sanstar Shipping. It was great fun to get to know this wonderful lady. After months of emails back and forth to finally get to meet her in person was beyond belief! Sandra told us that our container goes to customs on Tuesday. We should be prepared to receive it next weekend if all goes well.Is that possible?
You first enter La Mirage through gated grounds. We were greeted at the door by Raphels wife who is a manager. She had umbrells in hand to walk us around the corner past the small wedding chapel to the bar. We were greeted by a nice fire going in the fireplace which took the chill off after our walk through Maria`s pasture in a dizzle. I have travelled the world from Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Netherlands, Costs Rica, England and Ireland but I have never found a place as magical as La Mirage. Just image it is located just outside our back gate at San Miguel.
We were the only folks in the bar and as Sandra said it really looked like something out of a movie. So we began doing the ” girl thing” and posing for pics in various parts of the glamorous decor while lovely soft music played in the back ground.
Rosa took good care of us and served us cocktails and appetizers while keeping the fire going.
Painting of Senior Michel in his younger days. He is still a handsome and stately gentleman and we are so lucky to know him!
After our drinks and fun of posing for pics, we were escorted to the reception and dining room in the next building. Ahh, my favorite table # 4.
Below is Joel our little fish companion for the evening.
We were given warm rose-scented wash clothes to cleanse our hands before dinner.
Table 4
What to order? 4-course dinner with 1 glass of wine for $39 or a 3-course dinner for $35. All the food is excellent and later the chef came to our table.
Orchids
Great Ecuadorian wine
Appetizer compliments of the chef served in a playing music box.
Sherbet to cleanse your palate before the main course.
Dessert
My all-time favorite rose sherbet with real roses. I ate every bite!
La Mirage is a beautiful botanical garden. On the grounds, they have 9 peacocks. This little guy was perched on the window sill outside of our table to stay out of the rain.
Oh my, what a great experience as the adventure continues.
The Shaman’s name is Sonia and is dressed in a white shirt with tiny colored flowers embroideries on the top, a broad red sash belt, and a long white skirt. She is about 35 years old and pretty with long, somewhat curly black hair. She led me to a changing room with a locker to lock up my things. I changed into a thick white robe and slippers. I thought how nice there was a little sealed bag that I thought would be a headband for my hair. Wrong it was tiny paper underwear. So once I changed into my new attire, she escorted me to a large dark room. When you enter, you see a large straw woven mat covered in rose petals and on each end some cluster of herb branches. There is a fireplace lit directly in front of the mat. On the mantel, there are religious-looking status and antique-looking relics. Candles were burning, and recorded music sounded like monks chanting softly in the background. To my left, almost in a side room, I see an oval Jacuzzi tub that is back with lots of red and white rose petals floating on top. The other section of this room has a massage table with indirect lighting showing more rose petals sprinkled along the way and also on the table and covered steps to the table. Towels are rolled on the table and decorated with red rose petals.
The first thing she does while I am standing on the mat facing the fire is removing my robe. She has me raise my arms and bent at the elbow in front and a little to the side of me and places a smooth black warm stone about the size of a fist in each hand which I maintain this pose for the entire time. Then she starts to chant through a routine, is very focused, and is sweating. She picks up the branches of herbs and sprays them with something which smells lovely. Then lightly hits me on the head with the branches, proceeds to my face, and works her way down to my feet. She pulls the branches away and flicks them hard to the side. I knew what she was during because of my massage therapy training. She was flicking the negative energy off so that it did not connect with her…since she would not want to be taking any of my negative energy home with her later. All this time she continues to chant and then starts the whole procedure again from the back of my head down. She seemed to hit me a lot on the head must have been a lot of negativity there.
She then picks up to 2 brown eggs, lights a cigarette, angrily blows smoke on them, holds them together, and starts to rub them on my head and face and works her way down my body. All I keep thinking is are those eggs going to break…which they did not.
The next step is she gives me a rose to hold in each hand and demonstrates that I am to put my hands together in a praying position and rub them together where the rose petals start to fall on the mat. Then with the remaining roses, I rub them on my body, working my way down. Her chanting continues.
She then lights three candles in each hand, takes a sip of water, and spits, trying to put the flame out. The flames shoot a little sideways; she continues to take sips of water and continues to try to spit the flame out. She does this with a lot of force. Then she goes to my backside and spits cold water on me…wow, what a shock that was!
She then led me to the rose pool and gently assisted me in the warm water pool. The Jacuzzi is never on, just tranquil warm, soothing water. She ensures I am lying in the water up to the back of my head. She then washes my face with something that reminds me of an exfoliate. She massages my head, hands, and arms. She gives me a large stone to hold on my chest just underwater. Then it leaves me to soak in bliss for about 15 min. She adds more wood to the fire and gets it going. When she returns, she fills a basin with fresh water from the tub and washes my face, which must have been some mask since it now has dried and feels just a little tight. She then moves the rose petals in the tub toward my chest and proceeds to use the petals to wash my face, hands, and arms, followed by rubbing my hair.
Next, she helps me out of the tub, wraps me in warm towels, and assists me onto the massage table face down. There is a small hole at the top of the massage table where you position your face, and I see a tiny bowl of red roses. She wrapped my hair in a towel and has replaced the wet towels with dry ones keeping me draped at all times. Then the most beautiful full-body Swedish massage I have ever had, the music became more upbeat and was in English, which reminded me of Enya. If you have not heard Enya, you must because you would love it very soothing. She sometimes gives me more warm stones to hold in my hands and covers my eyes with something soft when I am positioned face up. This must-have lasted about 45 min. Before I got up, Sonia tied a string on my right wrist. I later saw this was a tiny red string bracelet with red beads. Not sure what it means, but since it is red must have something to do with roses? I will find out next time we visit our neighbor at La Mirage. Then she helped me on with my robe and slippers. She asks me if I would like tea or aqua. I opt for tea, and she leads me to another large room that must be like a meditation room. Dark with red salt lamps and some little glowing light that emitted fog like dry ice would do. There is a circle of couches with ottomans. She covers one of the ottomans with a towel, lifts my legs to a comfortable position, and brings me some hot herbal tea with two large leaves floating in it. The tea was delicious. She says stay and relax. After a while, I take my tea back to the changing room to shower, shampoo my hair, blow dry my hair and get dressed.
Sonia escorts me back to the reception area and informs me that Bill has already paid and gone. I then leave through the security gate up the hill about 1/2 block and then another block through Marie’s pasture to the back gate of San Miguel. Our house sits beside a little pond not far from the gate entrance.
The entire treatment was relaxing, and I never felt ill at ease except during the egg process. Bill said he enjoyed his reflexology treatment and fell asleep! He will go back again. I plan to go each month and try something different. The discount makes it an affordable treat. After all the stress of backing boxes, downsizing, getting our pups here, and moving to a new country, it was just what I needed. They called this procedure purification, which is what Senior Michel (one of the owners recommended I start with). It was pure bliss.
Wednesday we got an email from Sandra (our shipper) that our container had reached the Guayaquil port. She told us to go immediately to Ibarra to go to the police station to obtain a custom document that proved we were in the country. We needed to do this immediately and then scan her the completed documents. So we quickly, arranged for Raphel to pick us up and take us there which is about 40 minutes away. We got there around 2:30 only to find the police station gates locked with a chain and padlock. Thank havens, Raphel was able to speak with some people and find out it would open again at 3 pm. We got the required paperwork and Bill offered the police representative a piece of candy. She would not accept the candy and Rafael said “no government employees can accept anything since this could be considered a bribe”. Oh my, Bill and his candy! Rafael then took us to a store where we could have the documents scanned on a stick drive so we could send them by email when we got home.
Yesterday, we got an email from Sandra at 3 p stating she was flying to Quito and we should meet her at the airport at 5p. The airport is about 2 hours away. So several emails went flying back and forth and she said we had a lot of paperwork to sign and we must come in order to not delay our container delivery. What happened to manana time? So we contacted Rafael and he immediately came over and off to the airport we went. God Bless him!
Sandra is a very kind and dramatic woman and is kinda on steroids! Talks a mile a minute and has so much energy and lots of drama. Would you believe that we met her at TGF Fridays at the airport? Where am I? Bill had to sign a lot of papers and turned in our original police customs forms to her. We then all loaded up in the SUV to take the forms in a package to TAM airlines to be immediately sent to her contact in Guayaquil.
We did not realize that Sandra would be returning to Cotachachi with us. For most of the trip back she was constantly on her I phone doing business with other customers. She is a true energizer bunny. We got home at 9 p and were worn out. Poor pups had not been fed and we had not eaten since breakfast. Sandra will be coming over today at 4 p to prepare for the move and then we are taking her to dinner at La Mirage. Who knows what else to expect from her today. The adventure continues!
Oven Blows Up
This morning I decided to heat up some rolls in the oven. I had the oven on high to expedite the process. About 5 minutes laterI heard a lot of glass breaking and the front door to the oven blew out! Well, I knew I did not like that oven and really had put off cleaning it with the oven cleaner I had bought. At least I am glad I had not already used my elbow grease cleaning the darn thing! Who would have thought? We had not planned to buy a new oven until we remodeled the kitchen. Once the microwave gets here we will be fine. So I guess we will have to rough it and eat out….darn!
I am quickly writing this since I have my photography class this morning and still have photo shoots to edit from our field trip to the market yesterday. Below are some pictures from the field trip to the waterfall. Oh, I nearly forgot I have finally found fresh horseradish. Now we can have the perfect Bloody Mary.
