Posts:
By Dr. Lee Dubs Fact: North Americans are currently migrating in large numbers to Ecuador, and especially Azuay Province, where Cuenca is located. First Question: Why? Second Question: Who are these people? Not everyone has the same motives, of course,...
To date, the Cuenca Expatriate Benevolent Association (CEBA) has raised $650 through the inaugural session of Gringo Bingo, various “passing-the-hat” opportunities, and blog posts. This amount will be matched by a donor who has asked to remain anonymous;...
April 1 isn't April Fools Day in Cuenca. Rather, it's the launch day of several weeks of parades, art shows, concerts, fiestas, and the kind of partying that goes on in a city that's celebrating its founding a mere 454 years ago...
Tourism in Cuenca and the rest of Ecuador will benefit from a new owner and an alliance of AirCuenca with DAE, the Caribbean airline, according to tourist officials. Arnold B. Leonora, who recently acquired a majority stake in AirCuenca announced the alliance...
I've never seen anything like it. At least not without a coupon or a comp or a cook in my own kitchen. El Nuevo Paraiso comes about as close as you can get to a free lunch. I met Jim Rathjen there who, chatting (or more like shouting over the max-volume TV...
The image of the San Rafael waterfall is ubiquitous in Ecuador's Amazon region, appearing on everything from tourist brochures to the backs of buses, alongside the Virgin Mary meant to protect drivers. The waterfall, the country's largest, is in the Sumaco...
Two weekly Gringo Nights take place in Cuenca. One is on Fridays at Zóe restaurant on Presidente Borrero between Mariscal Sucre and Presidente Cordova starting at 5 p.m. The other is on Tuesdays at DiBacco restaurant on Tarqui between Bolivar and Gran Colombia...
A one-year project to resurface and upgrade the Camilo Ponce Enríquez Airport in Catamayo will mean increased air traffic in Cuenca and long trips by car and bus to Loja and the tourist town of Vilcabamba. The airport work is scheduled to begin in July or...
The decision to institute parking fees on Av. Remigio Crespo is not the solution to the neighborhood´s traffic problems say business and home owners in the area. With more than 13,000 vehicle trips per day, the street is Cuenca´s businest and most...
Cuenca´s “gringo invasion,” a term coined by an Ecuadorian news magazine, may not be all it´s cracked up to be according to numbers released last week by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the national immigration office. On the other hand,...
My luggage was already overflowing and I needed a new printer anyway, so I left my old printer behind, planning on buying a new one in Cuenca. My friend Greg Madeiros, an expat computer guy, recommended the store CompuFacil. Armed with the address on Remigio Crespo...
Among the first sights newcomers to Cuenca notice, along with the billowing white clouds, the rolling green hills, and the red-tile roofs, are the big blue buses that spew black diesel fumes into the otherwise colorless alpine air. Hundreds of them bomb around...
The ornate lobby of the nation’s vice presidential palace is teeming with people in wheelchairs and on crutches, mothers leading the blind and the developmentally disabled. Many are here because they believe that the man upstairs is one of their own. Ever since...
By Anne Carr Bienvenido to Ecuador as a new immigrant! We are the fortunate immigrants who got to choose our new country, our method of transport, our accommodations, and what belongings to bring with us. We are not an exodus frightened of regime change,...
Editor’s Note: Deke and Shirlee arrived in Cuenca for the first time on a two-week visit to Ecuador in early March 2010, and Deke promised himself he’d expatriate within a year. After he and Shirlee visited Cuenca for a month in October, Deke went home to...
By David Shukman On the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, the director of the Darwin Foundation says there is only a decade to avoid an ecological disaster. In a BBC interview, Gabriel Lopez calls for limits on the level of visitors. In 2009, the number...
Unseasonably heavy rains in the Andes have caused airport closures in Quito and Cuenca and triggered landslides on dozens of mountain roads. Ecuador’s National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (INAMHI) blamed conditions on the La Niña effect in the...
By Edd Staton You strike up a conversation with a cabbie in a city you’re visiting on the way from the airport. He mentions he knows of a great investment property you really should take a look at. On the way to your car the bag boy at the grocery store mentions...
The Yunguilla Valley is beyond and lower than Girón, so it’s a little warmer and drier, prime orchard country. You take dirt roads off the highway down into the hollows and up into the hills where the properties are measured in acres and tropical fruit...
On the last Sunday of our month in Cuenca, Shirlee and I joined Dave and Chela for an impromptu tour southwest of Cuenca on the road down to Machala and the coast. Our tourguide and driver was Carlos Lara, a young Cuencano who learned his English in the U.K. and has a...
