Expat Life

Editor’s note: Karla Freeman, expat, traveler, tango dancer, writer, currently lives in Cuenca and is the author of Creating Magic in Midlife: 101 Questions and Answers to Reinvent Your Work, […]

Editor’s note: Viktoria Vidali has been a piano teacher, publisher, TV and documentary producer, photographer, and executive director of an environmental and educational nonprofit organization. Her first children’s book, Francisco […]

By David Morrill When I got my new U.S. passport in December, it also meant I needed a new Ecuadorian residency passport visa stamp. How hard can this be, I […]

By Sylvan Hardy Uruguay has become the only country in the world with legal, regulated, recreational-marijuana sales, the world’s first and only state-run marijuana marketplace. An omnibus marijuana law was […]

By Dr. Lee Dubs You can find a lot of articles that tell you that Ecuador is the perfect place to retire. Plenty of writers encourage you to move to […]

[Editor’s Note: Pets are important to many expats. The following article is an excerpt from Expats in Ecuador: Life in Cuenca Second Edition by David Morrill and Deke Castleman. It mainly deals […]

By Deke Castleman and David Morrill Although most expats get by without a car in Cuenca, many own one. You’ll find prices for new cars to be about 20%-30% higher than […]

Ecuador finds itself in a familiar position in International Living’s 2015 Global Retirement Index, released on Friday. The index rates it the world’s number one retirement country for the fourth […]

By David Morrill Angel Salvador Ortega stowed away on a banana boat out of Puerto Bolivar in 1994 and was on his way, he hoped, to being an illegal alien […]

By Mark Johnson I’ve met quite a few single expat men and women who have packed up life in the UK and headed overseas to search of a new life […]

The Special Foods of Cuenca  10 Alfajores  11 Aguardiente  11 Ají  12 Almuerzo  12   Babaco  14   Café  14 Canelazo  15 Ceviche  15 Chaulafán  16 Chicha  16 Chifles  17 […]

Introduction  1 Who Are We to Write This Book? 3   PART ONE: ATTRACTIONS AND DOWNSIDES CHAPTER ONE: Why Expatriate To Cuenca? Why Expatriate?  6 Why Cuenca?  6 The Rush […]

Introduction  1 A Note About Cuenca  2 How This Book Is Organized  3 Why We Wrote This Book  4 Similarities and Differences with English  8   Part One: Learning at […]

Introduction  7 People Watching in Parque Calderón 9 Abdón Calderón, Revolutionary Hero  9 The Park Scene 10 Around the Park 11 Shopping at the Mercados  15 The Mercados of El […]

This survey was completed by 352 people. Of the 318 who answered the first question, 55% took Spanish in school, with 42% taking French, and a surprising 23% studying Latin, […]

By Deke Castleman This survey, conducted in January 2013, received 282 responses: 240 from Cuenca and 42 from miscellaneous places around the country (Vilcabamba, the coast, Quito, Loja, Cotacachi/Otavalo, etc.). […]

By Michael Corkery As government regulators crack down on the financing of terrorists and drug traffickers, many big banks are abandoning the business of transferring money from the United States […]