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One of the odder features of modern air travel is that airports have become brilliant at selling almost everything except the one thing a traveler actually needs at six in the morning. My last trip took me through four international airports and one ecological airport...
By Michael Torney The ancient cultures in pre-hispanic Peru depicted the three worlds, the world above, the world in which we live and the world below. Travelling in the Andes it’s tempting to see these represented in the sky above and all around us, and in the...
Tom wasn't looking for a protest. He was trying to get across town. He had left home expecting an ordinary Wednesday morning in Cuenca. Instead, somewhere near the historic district, he found the street ahead of him filled with people. Not a few dozen. A river of...
Two years ago, when Ecuador’s electricity supply began to falter, I approached emergency planning with all the technical sophistication of an antebellum mortician. I bought candles. This was not entirely foolish. Candles are cheap, require no instruction manual and...
The other day I stumbled into one of those discoveries that makes you wonder how many useful things have been sitting under your nose for years. We've all had that experience. You buy a car and six months later someone casually mentions that the mirrors fold in...
When I was young, a pair of Levi's or Wranglers blue jeans seemed like essential kit. They were tough enough for outdoor work, respectable enough for most indoor activities and could be worn for several days without needing to be washed. More importantly, they were...
Everyone in Carlos’s bakery was laughing. The woman beside Tom leaned against the counter. The man in the hat shook his head. Carlos was still smiling as he handed over the bread. Tom smiled too. It seemed the appropriate thing to do. Outside, Robert caught up with...
By Jeremiah Reardon For “Colores de la Vida” on the premises of Equinoxio, Calle Tarqui 9-61 y Gran Colombia, doors open on Thursday, September 17 at 6 p.m. The exhibit by nine Cuenca artists runs until October 30. Located in a grand colonial building with a high...
By Louis Bourgeois Perhaps one of the things I enjoy most about turning 74 is that the preoccupations of my youth and middle age have fallen away. Our mission in this life is to give our highest creative gifts to the world.I have found that this endeavor comes much...
A few days after returning to Cuenca from several weeks of traveling, my phone buzzed with a WhatsApp message from a lady I had not seen in some time. She wondered if I would like to meet her for breakfast one morning. Five years ago I would have smiled, accepted...
Margaret and her husband, Tom, agreed they didn’t need a car in Cuenca. They agreed less often about the walk home. “We walk everywhere,” Margaret liked to tell friends back in the United States. “The market. Restaurants. The pharmacy. Everything’s right here.” Tom...
People often ask me why I chose Cuenca, and they usually expect the answer to involve the colonial center, the mild climate, the lack of mosquitos, or the comparatively low cost of living. Those things certainly helped persuade me, but after several years here, and...
By Jack Salmon The U.S. is nearly alone in the world in taxing people based on citizenship rather than residence. An American who moves to Toronto, marries a Canadian citizen, raises a family there, works for a Canadian company and pays Canadian taxes will still spend...
Charlie Larga, or the collective of writers who use that name, seems to have been born around 1950, when the population of the United States was about 154 million. By 2020 it had more than doubled. The population of the world did even better, rising from approximately...
Robert handed Paola a five-dollar bill and tucked the tomatoes, avocados and flowers into his market bag. He had bought from her often enough that the exchange required little conversation. She named the price. He paid it. They smiled. Nothing about the purchase felt...
Economists have several ways of telling us whether we are prosperous. They can measure gross domestic product, average income, purchasing power, inflation and the price of a basket containing everything from breakfast cereal to a new refrigerator. The results are...
By Garry Vatcher When most people walk into the Esperanza Thrift Shop, they are looking for a bargain. Maybe it is a shirt, a set of dishes, a lamp, a book, or something for the kitchen. What they may not realize is that every item in the shop has a second purpose-and...
Donald Trump recently claimed that the European Union is robbing the United States. The alleged robbery consists of requiring American technology companies to obey European law while doing business in Europe. Google has just been fined €890 million, split between €460...
“That would never happen back home” is not necessarily an unfair thing for an expatriate to say. Sometimes something really does work better somewhere else. The problem begins when the place we left becomes the automatic standard for judging the place where we now...
By Garry Vatcher Renting an apartment in Cuenca can seem remarkably simple. You find a place you like, agree on the rent, hand over a deposit, sign a contract, and move in. Then something breaks. That is often when you discover that the relationship between a landlord...
Week of September 06
U.S. sinkings of Ecuadorian fishing vessels trigger court scrutiny after 28 crew members are released.
Cuenca targets a November launch for its first new international link to Chiclayo.
Exports hit a quarterly record, but Ecuador’s import bill is rising even faster.
