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Cuenca city government has announced that garbage recycling will become mandatory in March. The municipality it will impose fines on users of the city’s waste collection system who do not separate organic, inorganic and plastic waste after Mar. 1. The ordinance establishing the recycling program was adopted in 2004 but has not been actively enforced....
Volcanologists and government officials are keeping a close watch on Tungurahua, in the central Ecuadorian Andes, making plans for evacuations if volcanic activity increases. Scientists and officials gathered at Tungurahua over the weekend to assess the situation. Along with thousands of local on-lookers, they witnessed small lava flows and volcanic rocks raining down on the...
EDITOR’S NOTE: Something that Ecuadorian expats learn early is how difficult it is to get accurate information in their adopted country. Anecdotal information, often wildly inaccurate, seems to rule the day for expats and locals alike. Ecuador Fact Checker is an occasional feature of Cuenca High Life which attempts to set the record straight on selected...
Akelarre (Ah-ka-Lah’-Re): In the Basque region of Spain the name means “meeting of the witches.” In Cuenca, it’s a jewel of a restaurant located in Hotel Inca Real at General Torres 8-40, between Sucre and Simon Bolivar. As you enter the restaurant, just to the left of the hotel entrance, you discover a rich European-Bistro...
For several days last week, Ecuador turned its concern from drought to flooding, as heavy rains in the Andes caused damage in areas north of Quito and near Cuenca. The rains are good news for the country’s power grid, as hydro-electric producing reservoirs filled to levels approaching normal. On New Year’s Day, the reservoir at...
Ecuador's initiative to protect the climate and the rainforest of Yasuni National Park by leaving its largest oil reserve in the ground will be supported by a new multi-donor trust fund to offset lost oil revenue, Ecuadorian and United Nations officials announced last week in Copenhagen. Ecuador's Foreign Minister Fander Falconi and Minister of Natural...
What’s the real story behind Ecuador’s electric power shortage? Will the rolling blackouts get worse before they get better? When will they end? Probably most important: Is this something we will have to live with for years to come? The answers paint a “bad news, good news” picture. First, it is important to understand the...
Combining Christian and pagan ritual, the sacred and the profane, and the bizarre and traditional, today’s Pase del Nino parade –the Passing of the Child– is one Cuenca’s most colorful annual traditions. Although the parade is held in many Latin American cities, organizers claim that Cuenca’s is the largest. As many as 35,000 will participate in...
The director of Cuenacaire, Rolando Arpi, says that Cuenca’s air quality has held steady in 2009 and has shown slight improvements in some areas despite an increase in the number of vehicles on the roads. Cuencaire, created in 2007 to measure air pollution, maintains two dozen monitoring stations throughout the city and in surrounding areas,...
By Penny Ripple Looking for a little elegance with a fabulous meal? Cuatro Rios, which opened in the fall in a beautifully restored colonial at 10-44 Padre Aguirre, half a block from Gran Colombia, is defintely worth checking out. You’ll enter through the main door and go up the stairs to the left. The ground floor,...
The World March for Peace and Nonviolence passes through Cuenca on Friday, Dec. 18, on its way to a conclusion in northern Argentina, Jan. 2, and local organizers are asking the community to join in. The march began in New Zealand Oct. 2, and has passed through more than 90 countries. It arrived in North America...
The government says it may not be able to deliver on its promise to end the rolling electric blackouts after today. In a short statement on Monday, Ecuador’s Electricity Minister Esteban Albornoz said that continuing drought conditions near the country’s largest hydro electric plant at Paute could extend the blackouts. “A month ago the rains...
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