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By Nell Greenfieldboyce When Linsey Marr looks back at the beginning of 2020, what strikes her is how few people in the world really understood how viruses can travel through the air. "In the past year, we've come farther in understanding airborne transmission, or at...
We live to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. --Anaїs Nin. Let this book as it ends remember the hand that wrote it. the eyes that slowly learned its alphabet, the thumb that peeled back its pages. The days were marked beforehand: phases of the...
Intense Saturday afternoon thunderstorms closed highways, flooded houses and destroyed vehicles and crops in areas to the east and west of Cuenca. The Cuenca-Pasaje highway connecting Azuay with El Oro Provinces was closed for two hours as three landslides blocked the...
By Stephen Vargha Winston Churchill once said, “We make a living by what we get but we make a life by what we give.” Cuenca's Mauricio Bernal is proving the point by delivering Christmas to the children of rural areas of northern Azuay Province. The owner and chef of...
By Adrianna Rodriguez Dr. Peter Salk vaguely remembers the day he was vaccinated against polio in 1953. His father, Dr. Jonas Salk, made history by creating the polio vaccine at the University of Pittsburgh and inoculated his family as soon as he felt it was safe and...
By Joe Minihane Brilliant tour operators going out of business. Airlines reliant on government handouts. Travelers left out of pocket on canceled trips they'd spent years planning. It's fair to say 2020 has been a challenging 12 months for the travel industry, but...
A group of 220 Cuban health care professionals arrived in Panama on Thursday to help fight the coronavirus pandemic despite objections from the United States, Panama's health ministry said. The Cuban medics will "reinforce the health system in this fight against...
Instead of the traditional Pase del Niño parade, Cuenca's famous Niño Viajero soared over the city in an army helicopter early Thursday morning and then took a ride in the "popemobile" used by by Pope Francis during his 2015 visit to Ecuador. In all, the Catholic...
Dr. Craig Heacock It's said that science progresses "one gravestone at a time," since major changes in theoretical perspective usually require a new generation or more to take hold. Psychiatry, in contrast, is in the midst of a massive shift: We're experiencing a...
A team of physicians working with the national Emergency Operations Committee is questioning the health ministry’s plan for delivery of Covid-19 vaccines. According the Health Minister Juan Carlos Zevallos, those who have been infected with the virus will not receive...
The municipal transportation authority (EMOV) said it will not issue safe conduct documents and will depend on drivers to observe the odd-even driving and curfew rules unless they have a valid reason to be on the road. “We are depending on the driving public to obey...
Editor's note: Long-time Cuenca expat Martha Mays died last week of pancreatic cancer at the age of 61. She returned briefly to the U.S. for treatments but, when they failed, decided to return to Cuenca to spend her final days. Her son Daniel Palimeri and expat friend...
Data on Covid-19 deaths has changed drastically since the beginning of the year, when the virus emerged as a major international health threat. Early estimates of Covid death rates by the World Health Organization and Chinese health officials, put the rate between 3.4...
Representatives of Ecuador’s tourism industry are crying foul following the imposition of new health emergency restrictions. “We weren’t expecting this and it’s almost like a nail in our coffin,” says Holbach Muñetón, president of the National Federation of Tourism...
By Deke Castleman and Sylvan Hardy We’re all Gary’s children. Gringos lived and worked in Ecuador long before Gary and Merri Scott showed up in 1995, but the Scotts, almost single-handedly, put Ecuador on the radar screens of thousands of pilgrims to the Middle of the...
By Kira Ganga Kieffer Infection and death rates caused by Covid-19 are raging, but the rollout of the vaccines brings new hope that the pandemic will end and we will soon be back to normal. Yet, according to a recent Pew Research study, 40% of Americans are wary of...
The 30-day state of emergency declared Monday by President Lenín Moreno is being met with anger and disbelief in the business community and could face a serious legal challenge in court. Moreno's order is a response to the threat of a new variation of the Covid-19...
By Stephen Vargha Cuenca used to be a desert in the land of beers. Less than ten years ago, the choices for beer were all mass produced and one could not parch his or her thirst for a quality beer as it basically did not exist in Cuenca. Since then, several...
The World Health Organization cautioned against excessive alarm over a new, highly infectious variant of the coronavirus that has emerged in Britain, saying this was a normal part of a pandemic’s evolution. The WHO was joined other prominent public health officials,...
By Cathy McKay Now that you are an expat who has landed in your host country, you need to think about how to create a support system like you had back home. After spending months or even years planning and putting your move into place to get to your destination...
