Posts:
For US, Canadian, and European expats, one of Ecuador's most attractive, stabilizing, and profoundly comforting features has nothing to do with snow-capped mountains or 16th-century cathedrals. It has everything to do with the cash in your wallet. Since the year 2000,...
By Will Douglas Heaven Some disillusionment was inevitable. When OpenAI released a free web app called ChatGPT in late 2022, it changed the course of an entire industry — and several world economies. Millions of people started talking to their computers, and their...
Fifteen prisoners were found dead Saturday and Sunday at Guayaquil’s Litoral Prison and government officials say they are unsure of the causes. Officials said the bodies were recovered in seven of the prison’s 12 pavilions and that autopsies are underway. Long-known...
Bored? - (De El Mercurio del lunes, 15/12) 10 lugares para conocer Azuay (10 places to visit in Azuay) - Cuenca's eastern cantons of Gualaceo, Paute, Sígsig, El Pan, Chordeleg, Guachapala & Sevilla de Oro let you sail in the Andes, discover crafts, learn the...
Dear Charlie, My significant other and I are coming to Cuenca for two months and would relish any advice on finding a reasonable place to stay with easy access to el centro. We only have semi-worthless Canadian dollars. Yours sincerely, Pierre Trudeau. Pierre, mon...
If you are missing a single tooth, your dentist will almost certainly present you with two main options: a traditional dental bridge or a dental implant. The choice is not always easy. In the US, a bridge is often slightly cheaper and faster, while an implant is a...
Jose Antonio Kast won Chile’s presidential election on Sunday, leveraging voter fears over rising crime and migration to take the country to its sharpest rightward shift since the end of dictatorship in 1990. Kast secured 58.30% of the vote in a runoff with leftist...
Energy Minister Inés Manzano said Friday there will be no power blackouts through early 2026. “Our hydroelectric facilities are fully operational due to the heavy rainfall throughout the year and we foresee no problem next year,” she said. At a press conference,...
In the early months, Cuenca feels like a backdrop. Beautiful buildings. Mountain light. Cafes that feel new each time you sit down. Life feels like a long vacation with errands mixed in. After six months, the city steps off the stage and into your daily life. You stop...
By Ashwin Rodrigues America’s most popular drug, by a wide margin, is caffeine. A 2025 survey published in Food and Toxicology found that almost 70 percent of Americans consumed at least one caffeinated drink per day. But caffeine isn’t just a cup of joe anymore. It’s...
By Katie Surma Over a quarter century in the Ecuadorian Amazon, oil giant Texaco (now Chevron) perpetrated an ecological disaster: It dumped 3.2 million gallons of toxic waste, spilled 17 million gallons of crude oil and flared nearly 50 million cubic feet of methane...
By Carrington Walker and Rory Gannon A Gloucestershire man has revealed how he managed to survive nearly a decade in Ecuador's most dangerous prisons, witnessing fellow inmates being murdered "in every way imaginable." Pieter Tritton, who was raised in Stroud, became...
Bored? - (De El Mercurio del martes, 9/12) Coro Santa Catalina dará recital navideño (Santa Catalina chorus to perform Christmas recital) - The Santa Catalina chorus will perform the "No sé niño hermoso" concert el miércoles, 17/12 a las 20:00 in the Teatro Casa de la...
Most people in Cuenca have never heard of Gary Stevenson. He is not a president, a pop singer, or a football manager. He is a British economist who used to make his living trading interest rates for CitiBank in London. He got very good at it and very rich at it. Then...
By Anand Sharma Human Rights Watch’s latest findings on Ecuador paint a troubling picture of a government increasingly willing to wield financial controls as political weapons. The freezing of bank accounts belonging to Indigenous and environmental groups-implemented...
By Jon Henley and Sam Jones A row over meat consumption in Spain over the last month is just the most recent eruption of the debate all over Europe, as the continent grapples with making its famous cuisines more sustainable. Food is inextricably intertwined with...
For many expats, the journey to Cuenca begins with a rental. It's the sensible first step: you explore neighborhoods, learn the flow of the city, and confirm that this is, indeed, "the place." But after a year or two of living in a rented apartment, falling in love...
By Alessandra Freitas The U.S. government is escalating efforts to crack down on gangs that move illicit drugs into the United States, with deadly military strikes at sea and measures to toughen up borders taking center stage. But as the U.S. doubles down on overt...
By Lucy Hancock We’ve all lived through the blackouts. I don’t need to remind anyone. Last September I was late to the party. By the time I got to MegaKywi Wayra Plaza the rechargeable bulbs were gone, the power banks were gone, the shelves looked like locusts had...
The search for the "cheapest" teeth implants is tempting. When a $300 implant deal from a clinic in Turkey is compared to a $3,000 - $5,000 price tag in the US , the savings seem obvious. But this is a dangerous comparison. A $3,000 US implant and a $300...
