Independent! That’s us. We gave a taxi driver directions to get us back to the tile stores in La Libertad to return the borrowed samples. Found Restaurante El Rincon Manabita and had lunch there.

Our lunch was minestrone soup and arroz con pollo (rice with chicken) and juice for $3.

And took a taxi to Banco Bolivariano to do some banking. We even figured out what the deposit slip said. You can buy anything from the stores on the streets:

We went looking for light fixtures and found a couple that might be OK in our kitchen, but we aren’t thrilled with them so we didn’t buy anything yet. For entrepreneurs: Ecuador needs a good lighting store, there are only a few fixtures available besides recessed lights.

At the Neptuno, 115 boxes of ceramic floor tiles were carried up. Each box weighed 63 lbs. Instead of carrying boxes, we brought them bottles of Pepsi, Frito Lay potato chips and Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies. They all liked that!

Electric work was getting into details today: how many outlets, location of outlets, how many lights, location of lights, location of appliances, etc. Some lines were run in trenches in the floor and others in wall trenches. Plumbing in both showers is taking shape, again trenching the walls to install new water lines is necessary.

The column in the middle has been an annoyance ever since we saw it. When we decided to retile it, at first they were going to tile over the existing, then we said we wanted the old off. There was a big surprise: the column had been built out with mortar and pieces of broken tiles. When all of that was removed, the column was smaller by 6 inches on every side. That was really good!

The best thing that happened this afternoon was the front door was returned with the new stain color applied. A dead bolt was also installed so the condo is secured again. We are very pleased with the stain color and are excited to see how the cabinets and doors will all look when completed.