So if you are reading this blog, you know or you should know that Jackie (my adoring wife of two or more weeks) and I have recently retired. This blog will immortalize that trek.

True to our well established behavioral patterns, we began to map out our future 13 days before we quit our jobs.

The first choice for our retirement estate was a gated beach location in Monte Carlo, complete with eight staff and a convertible Bentley. Sadly, we found that French is a difficult language to master and we were short on funds for this option.

On to plan B.  Cuenca, Ecuador.  “Why Cuenca, Ecuador?” you ask. Well, look on the internet or we can suggest some insightful books written by folks who have made the move. I may post on this another time.

For current purposes though, we retired and decided to relocate to Ecuador. Cuenca here we come.

Being the experienced world travelers that we are (not) and having relocated to new countries several times (also not), we acquired passports (an interesting process in itself because the postal clerk receiving our applications was having a bad day or week or career or life or some combination of the above and after waiting in line for almost as long as we were previously employed (we are retired right?)) she had us fill out a bunch of new documents and then told us that our pictures were not acceptable for passports so we left and had them retaken and returned only to find that it was now closed so after researching new places to complete our applications we showed up back at the post office bright and early the next morning hoping for a new clerk no luck there and after again standing in line we were told by our friendly USPS clerk that we were twenty ((count ‘em twenty)) minutes early for passport applications and would have to return which we did and were met by yet another line but we watched the clerk processing someone else’s passport application and guess what she led the gentleman over to a blank wall in the lobby and took his picture yup! She takes passport pictures a service that was not offered to  us anyway we were finally called up front and she  cheerfully completed our apps took our money and bid u adieu).

Whew, that’s about enough for today.

Hasta luego