I had a long Skype call with Ivan last night.? He is currently in Bogata, Columbia on a visit to Claribel’s sister.? He has sold his farm as it was too much for him.? He had it up to 110 acres of grazing land, but with no mains power he had to milk his 150 cattle by hand daily.? Then taking the milk to a Co-op distributor by motor cycle over 7 miles of un-metalled roads , meant he really had? no time for anything else.? So when he got an offer for the farm, he took it.
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Now, Claribel has a shop in Rurrenabaque selling fashions.? They have to drive to La Paz or to a place called Trinidad to get stock for the shop.? This can take 3 days.? A few months ago, they got stuck on a floating pontoon bridge that broke away during a flood and were stuck on that for nearly 24 hours.
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Ivan is doing a bit of tourist guide work and some translation work.? He is also gold panning in one of the national parks.? It usually takes 11 days walking to get to the place where they work, so he can be away from home for nearly a month at a time.? They now have mains electricity and a very flaky internet connection at the house.? He managed to get Google maps aerial views of the area where they are gold panning so they can find a route, but it takes almost a full day to download a single map page to print it off.
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He has got a small antenna up at the house and is occasionally active on 10 Mhz CW, but he has come from a place where he had zero noise and room to put up rhombics and vee beams to a place where he is restricted to only about 30 metres of antenna space and has a permanent S6 noise level.? However, he is about to buy a small piece of land right on the edge of the town where he wants to build a house and have a smallholding.? It will be less than 20 acres in all.? He should be able to get some half decent antennas in the patch.
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That is a short summary of a 40 minute call.? He sends 73 to all and will let me know when he is active again on a regular basis.
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73,,
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Shaun
