CuencaHighLife

Images of paradise often include white sand beaches, palms, breezes, and aqua blue waters. Perhaps not for those finding Shangri-La in the cool altitudes of Cuenca. Yet it’s certainly, what expats settling Salinas, Olon and other coastal gringo-magnets imagine when coming to Ecuador. For them, there’s an alternative much closer to home. St. Croix The...

By Joanna Bender When Pete Breckinridge and Michelle Bakeman, the husband/wife team behind the popular Popacuchu Café, closed and sold their thriving business recently, locals mourned the passing of the café. This 2-part series looks at how Pete and Michelle ended up in Cuenca to open Popacuchu Café and then walked away from that successful...

By Joanna Bender When Pete Breckinridge and Michelle Bakeman, the husband and wife team behind the popular Popacuchu Café, closed and sold their thriving business recently, locals mourned its passing, especially Michelle’s one-of-a-kind desserts. The couple is still in Cuenca and hard at work on their next business venture, a tour company targeted primarily at...

You may have seen the image on Facebook: a poster on a “Wholefoods” storefront window asking customers and employees to avoid “gendered” speech, such as “Hello Sir,” and “Thanks Brother.” It’s actually misleading. The Whole Foods Market in the United States does not have such a policy, but a restaurant in Australia with a similar...

Before moving to Ecuador, I made an effort to read up on the political situation here. I read many articles and watched a lot of TV shows that painted the country as a dictatorship, banana republic, and a few that claimed it was a paradise. I must say that what I learned during my research...

For New York pianist Jim Gala, playing jazz music is all about adding something meaningful to the moment when music is being created. And it’s not something you do by yourself. “You’re a thread in a fabric,” he said. “And that’s the joy of it – to be in an ensemble, hear what all of...

Have you taken an Ecuadorian bus lately? I’m not talking the local 12 to the market in Cuenca, but an inter-provincial, long-distance bus that goes where the weather’s hot. As many things seem to go for me in Ecuador, I have fully cycled through the emotional range of the bus usage experience, from rage, to...

Author’s note: This is the fourth and final article for the CuencaHighlife series that shares the scientific discoveries of how changes in lifestyle can reverse coronary heart disease and prostate cancer without drugs or surgery. In this article the author provides evidence that this lifestyle approach can be an effective treatment for prostate cancer. The...