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by Susan Schenck I neither eat nor recommend eating grains. They're not our natural foods, they're acidic, we didn’t evolve eating them, and most wreak havoc on our health. They're promoted as healthy by governments only because they're cheap food for the masses. Grains are for granivores—that is, grains are for the birds! One rare exception...
The National Transportation Agency and national police arrested a dozen drivers of 7- and 8-passenger vans on Friday, claiming they were operating without proper licensing and unfairly competing with bus companies. The arrests were made in Cuenca and Guayaquil. In the Cuenca area, vans taking passengers to Machala and Loja were stopped near Tarqui, the...
By Edd Staton Last Saturday, I visited my dermatologist to have a few troublesome spots frozen on my head. Such is the downside of my grooming choice. If you've never had this done, it's a simple procedure with liquid nitrogen in an aerosol container that removes possible pre-cancerous areas before they have a chance to...
The rock-bottom cost of living in Ecuador, where retirees can live comfortably on less than the average U.S. Social Security payment, has seen the country remain firmly at the top of International Living's annual Global Retirement Index for the third successive year. When putting together the Retirement Index 2011, Internationalliving.com's editors collated data from sources...
by Susan Schenck Before moving to Ecuador, I had been a very strict raw vegan for six years — until I started getting deficiencies. My brain didn’t function without DHA and B12. I also lacked vitamin D and K2 for the bones. A vegetarian diet doesn’t work for everyone — the fact is, we evolved...
GringoTree and two of Cuenca´s top tour agencies are teaming up to offer a series of tours of the Cuenca area and beyond. The first tour, “Two Worlds of Yunguilla,” is Tuesday, Sept. 6, and will visit Giron, the Tarqui Battle Memorial and Museum, the El Chorro waterfalls and the Jubones Desert, at the south...
As Calvin Trillin wrote in the November 2010 Condé Nast Traveler, the central colonial section of Cuenca “doesn't look like a sixteenth-century city that has been preserved; it looks like a city that has been in use since the sixteenth century.” Trillin describes himself as an inveterate urban walker, taking great pleasure in strolling city...
By Susan Schenck Ten days of no talking, no dinner, no reading or writing, no TV, radio or internet, no meat, no caffeine, no contact with the opposite sex, 12 hours of sitting, getting awakened at 4 a.m. with the sound of a clanging gong—sounds like hell? For many Cuencanos and foreigners who participated in...
by Susan Schenck I’ve been fascinated with belly dancing for 30 years. I took classes in San Diego and even performed a couple of times. Then I was invited to an all-women party in Cuenca, celebrating the revolution of Middle Eastern women. We were each to contribute a poem, blog, or story. But for me...
Ecuador sees the loans it has agreed to with China as "good news" because they are long term, and all that is required in return is "oil, and not the horrendous adjustments imposed by the IMF [International Monetary Fund]," left-wing Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa told analysts critical of the size and high interest rates of...
by Susan Schenck “Cadelaes, Casa del las especias” is a great little store in Cuenca that has top-quality items, as well as some obscure items unavailable elsewhere. For one thing, they have the best walnuts in Cuenca. I'm a fan of walnuts because they have a higher ratio of omega 3s to 6s than most...
While Cuenca's real estate market continues to show strong growth, the inflow of immigrants from North American is only a small part of the reason why. "What's driving the local market is the return of Ecuadorians from overseas to live in Cuenca, or who are investing now and planning to live here later," says Joseph...
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