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Dec 4, 2008 - Truck Sage Part 2
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Lots of bananas on the road side Many towns have really nice parks Fresh water blue crabs for sale on the side of the road 
We want to catch you up on what's happening. First, nothing happened on Monday (12/1). You may remember we thought that was when the anti-narcotics police would inspect the truck. Apparently, everyone was "unavailable".

But Tuesday (12/2) was a glorious day. Besides being our daughter Kara's 28th birthday, Ed went to the port and actually took part in the anti-narcotics inspection. The port staff took the container off the stack, and did the official opening of the seal. The police wanted to take the truck out of the container, but Ed convinced them they could inspect under the hood, etc. without taking it out of the container. The reason to not take the truck out of the container is that it's totally strapped & blocked down. Lots of trouble to take it out and put it back in again!

Ed chatted with the police, helping them look through the truck, the tool box, inspecting our first-aid kit we keep inside, etc. Ed saw the port officials put not only 1 but 3 locks on the container with a big tape across the door that said "Anti-Narcotics Inspected". All went well until Ed was leaving and said, "so the container should get loaded to leave on Thursday?" Well, the ship official said, "Thursday, we never have ships leave on Thursday. They arrive on Friday, get loaded and then leave on Saturday or Sunday!" Bummer!!!

Ed also left the port with still 1 more document missing. Apparently the anti-narcotics police wanted the original customs form. It was at the customs office (duh!) which meant the staff member from our shipping agent had to go get it. The customs officer was "in a meeting" on Tuesday. So Wednesday, he did get the form to the appropriate police department and then back again.

As we write this, all forms have been submitted, and it's a GO! The ship is scheduled to leave on Saturday. We have, again, changed our flight to Panama to leave on Monday (12/8). We can't get the bill-of-lading until Monday morning since the port offices are closed on Sunday. That should work since the ship will take 3 days to get to Panama. So we're looking at the truck arriving in Panama on Tuesday, about 2-3 days to get it out of customs. Hopefully we'll be on the road by Friday, 12/12.

Just to catch everyone up on our timing, our container from Asuncion is due into Nicaragua on 12/10. We have reservations to fly from Nicaragua to Atlanta on 12/15. So, sounds like something isn't going to work as smoothly as we had hoped. Pray for a resolution of all this. All is in God's hands!

We've included a few photos with this entry. Some are photos we took on our trip to Huaquillas to get the new customs form. We've also included a photo of our anniversary flowers. On Nov. 28th, we spent our 39th anniversary here in Guayaquil. We've also had to change hotels. We were at the Best Western, very nice, but expensive. We moved just 3 doors down to a cheaper hotel ($38/night), but still nice - just smaller. The view out our window is great - it's the Iguana Park, a day a night view. One bonus we have had is that eating has really been inexpensive. We both love shrimp, and we can get a wonderful shrimp lunch, taxes & drink, for only $3.80. So, we pig out at lunch and eat crackers & cheese for dinner. We have tried a few other local dishes. One is called encebollado. This is a fish soup with yucca & onion. We had ours with shrimp added, and the server apologized for charging us $5.00. We've also had the crab - the same as you'll see in the photos. That wasn't as good as we thought it would be, but we needed to try it since it's considered a local "must eat" dish.

Please continue to pray and we'll keep you updated as to our progress.


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