Posts:
There is a widely ignored truth about Ecuador, and it is not written into law or printed on any government website. This country does not run on procedures, institutions, or government stamps; it runs on WhatsApp. If you want food delivered, a taxi summoned, a plumber...
By Christine Clark "Don't swallow your gum, it'll take seven years for your stomach to digest!" "Ah, just pick it up off the floor — five second rule!" Most of us grew up with wives' tales such as these, and probably believed them. But, as we've gotten older and...
One of the things Cuenca does especially well is variety. Cafés here are not interchangeable. Each one attracts a slightly different mix of people, activities, and expectations, often without anyone saying a word. Knowing which café fits your rhythm makes all the...
Several readers have asked Charlie to comment further on imported packages and the pros and cons of various sources, so I have been peering again into the mysterious world of cross-border shopping from my desk here at Larga Towers in Cuenca. As many of you will...
Where are you from? I’m never quite sure how to answer this question. In my experience, North Americans tend to move around more than others, but rarely is anyone asking for my life’s story when they ask where I’m from. Do I respond with where I was born, where I grew...
There are moments in life when you stumble upon a solution so perfect, so economical, and so free of future regret that you briefly consider forming a religion, or at least telling a stranger about it in the supermarket queue. My most recent one arrived, as many...
After you start noticing the different tables in Cuenca, something else becomes harder to ignore. It is not just that people gather at different cafés or at different hours. It is that those tables often reflect very different assumptions about risk, visibility, and...
Somewhere north of Panama they invented an app that tells you when to be hungry. It also tells you how much guilt you should feel when you order dinner. If you do not tip enough, the little icons turn sad and the universe frowns upon you. If you hesitate at the...
By Larry Scherwitz, PhD Those of us who live in Cuenca know how fortunate we are to have physicians who truly listen—doctors who take time, think carefully, and treat us as whole human beings. One of those doctors is Dr. Pablo Parra. For more than 35 years, Dr. Parra...
There was a time, and it was not so very long ago, when the Republic of Ecuador would hand you a retirement visa if you could prove an income of about seven hundred dollars a month. That was back when rotary dial phones still worked and avocado toast had not yet been...
France has made French language and civic exams mandatory for certain multi-year residence permits, long-term residence cards and citizenship applications from January 1, 2026, making it tougher for some foreigners to secure long-term stay or nationality. The new...
There is a man on YouTube who says he is living in Ecuador on a budget of about $167 a month. His name is Steve W., a sort-of retired Canadian who moves around the country volunteering and doing odd jobs in various places, living a kind of free-range lifestyle with no...
Spend enough time in Cuenca’s cafés and you start to notice something subtle. The room is full, yet the tables rarely mix. Older expats often sit with people who arrived around the same time, share similar routines, and meet at familiar hours. Younger expats are...
Someone once asked me how long it takes for a package to be shipped from Temu in China to Cuenca, and the question simply is not that easy as it involves multiple actors, customs clearance in Quito, and taking into account factors like days of the week and public...
By Liam Higgins An immigration researcher says Cuenca’s population of North American and European expats is growing again. “The numbers were steady for several years despite the bad news about crime on the coast, but they began to increase in late 2024 and this...
There was a restaurant I used to love in the historic center. It lived inside an elegant old hotel that seemed to have more character than customers. The dining room had tall ceilings, dark beams, polished wood floors, elegant skylights, and the confidence of a place...
If you ever find yourself thinking the Terminal Terrestre is just a place to catch a bus, you have not been paying attention. The main bus station in Cuenca is a destination all by itself. It is also one of the few buildings in town where you can eat lunch, arrange a...
Walk through Cuenca today and you can already see the quiet signs of change. More QR codes on tables. More digital payment apps. More small shops testing online orders and automated marketing. What once felt like a distant future is now part of daily life. As 2025...
In my recent column about IVA refunds as they relate to expatriate retirees, I knew perfectly well that the comments section would not be a place of tame consensus. Topics that mix money, morality, and Ecuador have a reliable way of flushing out worldviews, and this...
Spend enough time in cafés around Cuenca and a quiet pattern starts to appear. It does not announce itself or come with rules or signs. Instead, it unfolds through habit, comfort, and time. This is what many expats slowly recognize as the café divide in Cuenca. At...
