Cuenca Week Two

Starting our second week in Cuenca, we have settled in and gotten more adjusted.  We have worked hard to make our little apartment more comfortable and to improve the look and ambience of our little back patio. 

Garden area before weeding

Larry enjoying the revitalized garden.

Laundry area before.

Laundry area after with Ecuadorean textiles.

Our new and improved flower garden.

Larry has finished one week of language school.  His teacher is a nice young Ecuadorian woman named Lucie. She is very patient—only after the second or third time making the same mistake does she gently correct.

Lucia, Larry's teacher at Escuela Simon Bolivar.

His school is in a renovated old Cuenca townhouse, with four floors and a large central courtyard that is now roofed over to provide protection from the weather—and this past week we have needed that.  We thought that the Ecuadorian rainy season would be over, but it rains most days, often with violent thunderstorms.  Believe it or not, even here at the equator, a rainy day can be damp and cold.

Sue has decided to enroll in a less intensive course that will consist of 10 hours next week.  We will both be going in the afternoon, so we will have our mornings together and be inside if the pattern of thunderstorms or rain in the afternoons continues.

We are getting to know the city better.  Yesterday we walked down our street to the river—about a 10-15 minute walk and had lunch in a nice little sandwich shop that fronts on the river and the lovely pedestrian path the city has built along the river.  Even though it was Saturday afternoon, there were few people on the path and along the river, so we had much of the way to ourselves.

Riverwalk along the Rio Tomebamba

Tomembamba Riverwalk is 5 blocks from the central plaza

We also discovered the “Multicines” or multiplex movie theater.  We bought tickets for “Skyfall” for the evening.  Our tickets were about $4 each—cheap by American standards but pricey for many Ecuadorians.  Skyfall was offered in two theaters—one in English with Spanish subtitles and the other dubbed in Spanish.  We decided to go for the English, but given the limited dialog in a Bond movie, we might have been able to understand the Spanish version.  We recommend the movie; really enjoyed it.

Basically our lives have fallen into a routine of food shopping, school, wandering and finding a nice lunch or ice cream place, and keeping up the apartment.  Pretty banal.  We are hoping to do some exploring outside of Cuenca by bus, plane or auto—just need to do some research and make some decisions.  Right now we are concentrating on language skills and trying to figure out Cuenca’s vibe and are happy to have a restful, slow paced existence.

We had pizza at what was advertised as “gringo happy hour” at a small restaurant on Friday.  A couple people came to our table to greet us.  Everyone was our age or older, very “hippy” looking and seemed to know one another.  One man told us retirees come to Cuenca, some stay, some buy property, some miss the U.S. too much and return.  It is a lot cheaper to live here—he lives on about $600 a month in an efficiency.  Our apartment is one bedroom and costs $600 a month.  And, yes, it is cheaper to live here, but you have to embrace the culture and really want to live the ex-pat life.  We are thinking that doesn’t define us, but we are enjoying experiencing the culture for a short period.  One thing for sure, on an extremely limited budget, you can relocate here and live very nicely.