Not a Nice Morning Call!

This morning we had a visit from Francisco (The neighbour that we are doing the potatoes with). He informed us that some of the other neighbours (those that have the land next to use and use the track in front of the house) had said that we were not giving them enough room for there LARGE rotovator to get past.

OK I had assumed that 1 meter would be enough room to get any thing past, But no real problem. The big problem. to my mind was that Francisco said that these unnamed persons had said that they would phone the Police about it (without talking to us first) on Monday, but Francisco had said that he would talk to us first.

The thought of the hassle really upset me, but we got right down to looking what we could do to give more room, (They had requested 1.5 meters). After some work with tape measure and string we came up with what we thought was a good solution to the problem.

We would start the ramp down to the current track level from the side of the house, which would result in the whole area in fount of the house being level but we would lose the standing area for a water tank.

That done we had lunch and then started moving the rocks of the walls so that they reflected the new layout. I was still worried about the threat of the Police as we were not sure who these other persons were and whether what we were doing would solve there complaint. Luckily two of the locals came to the other land later that day and we were able to explain what we were doing and get there approval. The most annoying thing is that we know them both and they could have talked to us about the problem.

One good thing is that we now know who owns that land next to ours, when we moved in it was owned by an old guy that lived in Santa Cruz, but it now seems to belong to the guy up the road.

The saga goes on and on……

We received a couple of letters recently from the land registry(The Catastro) which stated that the registry couldn’t be updated due to some problems. See here. So this morning with Sheila we took these letters to the Notary over in Los Llanos expecting to be able to pick up yet another piece of paper to take down the offices of the land registry in Santa Cruz. But no it would seem to be a little more complicated and thus more expensive.

It would seem that on one plot the size of the plot has been updated in the land registry at some point and no longer agrees with the size recorded in the deed, So we have two options; the first is to track down the original seller and get a new deed drawn up with the correct size in it, But as from what I have been told he now lives in Venezuela (a lot of people for La Palma went there in poor times for work, including his farther who built the house in the first place). The other option in to hire an official surveyor for about 200€ to produce an exact measured plan of the plot that we can take to the land registry. This is the least of the problems.

It would seem that the other plot of land is much more complicated. I don’t quite understand the exact problem but it would seem that the ownership registered in the land registry doesn’t tie up with what is on our deed or the previous owners. So in order to sort this out we need to get a affidavit done by the Notary to prove that we are the owners of the land. But in order to do this we need to gather up the following people; The owners of  all the land which borders ours, four witnesses from the area, and uncle Tom Cobley and all. We also need to put adverts in the local press, get a piece of paper from the town hall which says that the land doesn’t belong to them. As you might guess this whole lot is going to be expensive, we were told about 700€.

We are pretty annoyed because we are sure that the previous owner had to do something similar to this before he could sell to us, and it would seem that this didn’t get as far as the land registry.

This has made Helen feel very upset and hasn’t helped with her depression, and with the ongoing stress  it has made of us feel very unsecure.

But on a lighter note when we got home we checked the post box and found a letter from the Land registry which confirmed that the house registration had been updated. So at least we own the house but not just the land around us.

Gona Live on Solid Rock

Well the first post of 2008 and it's bad news I'm afraid. Last night as we were driving home after teaching we had just got to the other side of Barlovento and were driving down one of the many ravines that cross the north of the island when I noticed out of the corner of my eye some movement on the side of the road, with horror I realised that it was a rock of a significant size. I did what I could but as the rock hit the road only about a meter in front there was not a lot I could do and I hit the rock square on the front of the car at about 30 - 40Km/h.

We pushed the rock about 2 - 3 Meters further down the road. When we got out to inspect the damage we discovered the rock firmly wedged under the front of the car. I rock was in fact about the size of 2 footballs. As we rolled the rock out from under the car and to the side of the road I saw the horrible sight of water running down the road which could only mean one thing the radiator was toast.

Luckily just then a land rover came past and stopped to help as the car wasn't going to go anywhere under it's own power the guy offered to tow us to somewhere safe where we could wait for a truck to come and pick us up. Just as we were sorting out the tow rope another car stopped and said that if we take some photos we could claim from the island government the cost of the repair. So we took some photos. We then phoned our friend Sheila to ask her to call the insurance company and ask for a tow. About an hour later the tow truck arrived and the stricken bertha was loaded on board and we and the car were taken to Santa Cruz where Sheila picked us up. We finally got to bed at about 1am.

Oranges & Lemons

One thing we have noticed living here is that every now and then you have various items of produce turn up. We have had potatoes, pumpkin and other things like that, but the other day as we were sorting out some things outside the house to go to the dump. We heard a "hóla" coming up from the steps to the lower terraces, an then appeared the farmer who owns the large house a the top of our pista. On his shoulder was a large bucket full to the brim of Oranges.