Posts:
By: Connie Farrell Scuderi You are living in beautiful Ecuador, having finally reached retirement age or as known here, tercera edad. Once you have unpacked and settled, you ask yourself how to find the resources you need to ensure being prepared. These are some of...
By David Morrill and Deke Castleman Where do Cuencanos and expats buy their food? Although Supermaxi, Coral, Super Aki and other modern supermarkets sell their share of fresh produce, meat and fish, the city's markets, or mercados, continue to be the Cuenca's main...
Italy has joined Greece, Japan, Spain, Thailand, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and several other countries in enforcing new tourist tax hikes, but it’s drawing a hard line by targeting weekend and last-minute visitors with sharply increased fees and heavy penalties in...
Charlie Larga is nobody special — at least, not at first glance. Just another tall gringo with a sunhat, buying instant coffee in Tuti and muttering about how the bus used to cost less. He didn’t come to Ecuador to find himself. He came here because, like many of you...
By Jim Smith Retirement no longer means staying in one place. More seniors and retirees are choosing to live abroad while working part-time or managing their finances online. In cities like Cuenca, Ecuador, this new lifestyle, sometimes called digital nomadism, is...
Let’s begin with a simple assumption: you just want a blender. Nothing fancy. You’re not looking to crush diamonds or blend frozen mangoes into silky perfection for your artisanal juice bar. You just want to make a banana smoothie without waking the neighbors or...
By Heather Walters Nick and Melanie Thompson are doing things their way. They and their four young children have embarked on a journey to explore parts of the world and experience the many cultures it contains firsthand and for real. Currently, they are in southern...
A business coalition is urging the government to impose restrictions on the 4x4 package delivery system, claiming it has become an unregulated import route for goods that compete unfairly with Ecuadorian industry and retail outlets. ¡Mucho Mejor Ecuador! says the...
Going to the dentist in Cuenca is a bit like entering a lottery where all the prizes involve sitting with your mouth open while a stranger stares into it — but it’s still better than doing it in the United States. Prices are lower, the equipment may be newer, and if...
One of the more curious subspecies of expats is the small but noisy contingent that is utterly obsessed with the price of things; more specifically, they are obsessed with the notion that they are being over-charged by Ecuadorians and that other expats are complicit...
Diego (not his real name) arrived at the bus station nearly an hour before the 5 a.m. scheduled departure. He was too nervous to sleep. His entire family joined him, but only as far as the edge of the floodlit parking lot, and then only long enough to offer a few...
Lessons from the private sector can help us manage our families in a more business-like manner. The formula is simple: Business is deliberate. Deliberate is effective. Deliberate + Effective = Defective. The first step toward more business-like parenting is to look in...
Somewhere in Cuenca, there’s a perfectly painted pedestrian crossing. Maybe two. They are decorative, symbolic, and approximately as binding as a pinky promise at a kindergarten birthday party. You, a sensible foreigner raised on fairy tales of driver courtesy and...
By Jeremiah Reardon Living on my own in New York City, at age nineteen, I yearned to see the world. When I finished the 1965 spring semester as a night business student, my boss in finance fired me from my job at Otis Elevator’s International Division. With such a...
By Ellie Muir Skype has seen it all. High-pressure job interviews. Awkward transatlantic family gatherings. Long-distance love affairs (and breakups). Many of our big life events have been bookended by Skype’s bouncy dial tone and its end-call notification that...
By Stephen Vargha “I’m nervous,” said Amaru Zapata. “I’ve never done anything like this before.” Not many have. Roughly 40,000, of which the U.S. has approximately half, have experienced what Zapata was about to do on April 26. It was his first solo show: “Re-Defining...
I regularly commute from a tiny village overlooking the Paute River to Cuenca, enjoying the moment when it's time to climb aboard the tranvía for the easy trip from the bus terminal to El Centro or beyond. The trip is quiet, takes but a moment, and is a great example...
By Lachlan Brown Growing up without social media means your worldview is untouched by likes, shares, or viral trends. Instead, it’s shaped by direct experiences, personal interactions, and self-reflection. As someone who belongs to the generation before the social...
By Jack Davis In a former career, I worked in computer systems analysis (now known as IT). I was an early adopter, setting up AppleTalk networks and communications systems and some of the first shared high-resolution remote printing sites for a university-based...
Within a six-block radius of San Sebastian Plaza are two saddlers, at least five furniture makers, a knot of tailors, a sprinkle of goldsmiths, a colorful stained-glass studio, a thriving farmers market, more bakeries than I can count, and twice as many restaurants as...
Week of August 23
Ecuador’s economy grew 2% during the first half of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to new Banco Central del Ecuador data.
Cuenca gets a prime view of next week’s deep partial lunar eclipse.
Ecuador’s economy grows 2% in the first half of 2026.
