Posts:
By Michael Starling Take a look at almost any travel bucket list and Machu Picchu is likely to feature prominently. But visiting Peru’s famed 15th-century Inca citadel is becoming increasingly challenging, with tourists facing overcrowding, long queues and unreliable...
There is a simple test that reveals how someone learned Spanish, and it takes about five seconds. Ask them to say Tomebamba. If the word comes out “Tomebambay,” you can be fairly sure the Spanish was learned from a screen instead of from a speaker. I was reminded of...
There is a moment, usually around one o'clock, when the soup bowl arrives. It is placed in front of you efficiently, often before you have quite sat down. The color is usually some shade of yellow. Floating within it are lentils, perhaps a few grains of rice, and the...
By Kris Fischer I look to my left. A bus careening on two wheels and belching diesel fumes bears down on me. I leap backwards just in time. My fellow pedestrians who have stayed safely curbside look at me with raised eyebrows as if to say, "Silly gringa! She really...
The other day I was scrolling through Facebook when I came across a familiar sort of message. A man, perhaps in his fifties or sixties wrote that he was not actually sick, but he had the uneasy feeling that his body was not working quite the way it did when he was...
By David Farley Nomads have gotten a short shrift in history. As Anthony Sattin writes in his new book, “Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World”: “People who live with walls and monuments, who have written most of history, have failed to find meaning in or to...
By R.S. Gompertz When the English language gives you lemons, you can make lemonade. Deciphering mixed metaphors in English is like comparing apples and oranges except that the apple never falls far from the tree, even when a bad one ruins the barrel. You may have...
There was a time, not so very long ago, when a doctor might look at your blood pressure, nod thoughtfully, and say something along the lines of, “Well, that’s about right for your age.” The rule of thumb was simple enough to remember and reassuring enough to repeat:...
The drive from the high valley of Paute to the sprawling beaches of Ecuador’s central coast takes all day. We left a little after dawn and arrived just in time to order a celebratory cocktail as our fatigue and the blinding heat of the afternoon faded into the...
One of the more interesting discoveries about life in Cuenca is that almost nothing is ever called what you think it ought to be called. Take garbage collection. A few days ago my landlady telephoned to announce, with the accusatory tone usually reserved for tax fraud...
By Carlos Calderón A couple of years ago, a recently arrived expat who I had only met a few days earlier asked if I could arrange a meeting for him with then-President Guillermo Lasso. He knew that I had been a consultant to the government on an archaeological project...
A curious thing happens after you have lived in Ecuador for a few years. You gradually stop lusting after the latest digital technology and begin evaluating it the way Ecuadorians often evaluate refrigerators, rice cookers, and umbrellas: Does it work, will it...
There was a time when many people described moving abroad in simple terms. Cuenca was beautiful. The cost of living was lower. The climate was comfortable. The pace felt easier. For many retirees and expats, that was enough to explain the move. But expat life in...
In Cuenca, most expats have figured out one way or another of watching English-language TV or videos, usually via fiber optic cable and a reasonably reliable internet connection. One quickly discovers, however, that the modern world rests on a fragile assumption: that...
There are few activities more satisfying than preparing dinner with music playing in the background, a glass of wine close at hand, and the satisfying aroma of the finishing product. We are challenged to consume in order to live — but we are graced with the gift of...
In an age when much of television is disposable, forgettable, or so relentlessly superficial that even its creators probably struggle to recall it six months later, ITV's Up series is a towering achievement. It may well be one of the most important television...
There are certain dishes that arrive not as recipes, but as recollections, and Sauerbraten is one of them, because I did not so much learn it as absorb it, at the age of fifteen, in a part of Germany where the forests were black, the food was serious, and the map had...
After spending enough time around relationships abroad, you may begin to notice something else. Not just how relationships form. Not just what people exchange within them. But why some connections gradually become more genuine over time. This is not always obvious in...
There are certain subjects that one learns to handle the way one handles antique porcelain in a showroom: with care, and with the full awareness that dropping it may lead to an unbudgeted purchase. Immigration, often just called migration, as if people were birds, is...
I enjoy walking around El Centro on Sunday mornings to surround myself in beauty while meandering quiet neighborhood streets. I often see whole families dressed for church, reminding me of when I was little, kicking my way through autumn leaves so deep it caused a...
Week of September 20
Ecuador turns to industrial power cuts to protect Mazar and keep homes from going dark.
Ecuador raises its 2026 growth forecast, but El Niño could spoil the outlook next year.
Cuenca retirees challenge medical and therapy changes at IESS senior center.
