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By John Keeble It is 3 a.m. and pitch black as we struggle up the first steep climb towards a dream – to summit the ice and snow peak of Volcán Carihuairazo a few kilometres from the mighty Chimborazo in Ecuador's volcanoes region. The night sky, before we turned on...
Editor’s note: This is the fifth in an ongoing series that looks at how the Covid-19 pandemic is affecting the lives of Cuencanos and Cuenca expats. By Robert Bradley and David Morrill Jeff Salz, a four-year resident of Cuenca, first visited South America in 1973 to...
Unlike news reporting, where timeliness and deadlines prevail, composing a weekly column requires diligent patience. Folks often offer vignettes, eager for me to quickly pluck and dissect the highlights into a story, but a written commentary is not something that can...
"To be what you must, you must give up what you are." Yusef Islam/Cat Stevens Have you decided? Are you leaving your home country to seek adventure, excitement, and a new perspective elsewhere? If so, have you told the people you love? Telling the people we love...
Editor’s note: This is the fourth in an ongoing series that looks at how the Covid-19 pandemic is affecting the lives of Cuencanos and Cuenca expats. By Robert Bradley and Sylvan Hardy A 35-year resident of Cuenca, Karen Kennedy personifies the heroic adventurer who...
The restaurant business is a difficult undertaking no matter how you slice it. For the patrons, it is only after the rent, utilities and credit card bills are paid, as well as the other myriad expenses of daily life are set to rest, that they decide it is time to...
You might think it’s easy to spot Boobies seemingly everywhere along Ecuador's sun- drenched Pacific beaches and offshore isles, right?! Well, Boobies can be elusive and believe it or not, they’re not as plentiful as they once were. Seems that they’ve enjoyed so much...
By Akia Rahming I've been living in Ecuador for nearly a year now. While there have been a lot of differences from my home country of the Bahamas, the biggest is definitely the switch in language. While the official language of the Bahamas is English, Ecuador is a...
By Sandee LaMotte and Virginia Langmaid The spread of Covid-19 among members in a household after one person is infected is "common" and occurs quickly after illness onset, according to a new study from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The person...
My long-ago girlfriend, Sherry, finally won me over. I remember distant times when I could hardly wait for her to get home so I could re-play the latest singer-songwriter composition I heard that moved me nearly to tears. She was always patient, and always sweet....
By Abby Moore There's plenty of advice out there designed to "prevent aging," when in reality, we all age. Rather than fearing the process, aging should be approached with health and longevity in mind. And it turns out, the path to get there is relatively simple....
By Lenny Charnoff The other day a long time customer said that “Cuenca Salmon reminds me of Trader Joe’s in the United States”. I said, “Thank you, for the compliment. I appreciate the positive comparison. Can you tell me why?” “Here’s why,” she answered. “With points...
It’s truly a fall gale of epic proportions, as turbulent winds of uncertainty pummel us from one high anxiety to another. “It’s the pandemic, it’s the social unrest, it’s climate change and the wildfires. It’s the election, it’s upcoming holidays, said Vaile Wright,...
Many people move to other countries for work because of the financial benefits it can offer them. Companies overseas may pay more than local companies for certain jobs, especially if the job pool for that position is tiny. But not all countries can guarantee high pay,...
By Michaeleen Doucleff Early in the coronavirus pandemic, air travel looked like a risky endeavor. Some scientists even worried that airplanes could be sites of superspreading events. For example, in March a Vietnamese businesswoman with a sore throat and a cough...
Without invitation, the wind crawled inside my Ark’teryx jacket and wrapped its cold, invisible tentacles around me. I was snug in between two lichen-studded boulders in a little nest of paramo grass and sticks I had pulled up around myself. My camera rested on my...
By Ann Marie Miller You might not know it, but U.S. citizens are ditching their status as Americans in droves. “Citizide” is a dramatic term for what’s really just renouncing one’s citizenship, a step that a rapidly increasing number of U.S. citizens living abroad are...
By Noah Strycker "Maria! Maria!” yells Ángel Paz, who stands at my shoulder in a thick Ecuadorian cloud forest holding a can of worms. “Venga, venga, venga!” (Come, come, come!) he shrieks. At my other shoulder is Edison Buenano, an enthusiastic, 30-something...
Editor’s note: This is the second in an ongoing series that examines how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the lives of Cuencanos and Cuenca expats. By Robert Bradley and Sylvan Hardy Paulin Jose, director, VIP Home Healthcare Helping sick expats through the pandemic...
When Becky learned of her diagnosis in January, she was filled with dread. Her first brawl with breast cancer began nearly 30 years before but she remembered every round of the prodding and poking that followed as if they were bruising donnybrooks. This would be her...
