More Tales from Cuenca

When you are on the road as long as we are planning to be, there are certain things, like getting prescriptions, doctor and dentist visits that you need to try to do wherever you are.  Pharmacies are  ubiquitous here and seem always to have lines out the door.   We wondered why.  We learned that people only go to a doctor if they are gravely ill.  For the usual stuff, they line up at the “farmacia” and have a chat with the pharmacist who then doles out whatever medicine that seems appropriate.   The medicines we take you can buy over-the-counter (for high cholesterol and high BP—we are aged, after all), but cost as much as we pay after insurance back home.

Cuenca--Old ways & new.

This week we visited with an American trained dentist, Dr. Grace Ordonez.  She performed a cleaning for both us—she did everything in her tiny office, as she seems to have no other help—and urged us to come back to have some of our mercury based fillings replaced.  The cleanings were $40 and she says the filling replacements will be about the same for each.  Imagine the cost in the U.S.

With Eduardo Segovia at his studio

Sra Segovia in her garden

On Friday, we had a really great outing.  Our Spanish teacher, Lucia, arranged for us to visit a Cuencan ceramicist, Eduardo Segovia.  He began working at the age of six (he is now 72) because his father, a potter, was often drunk and the family needed the money.  He now has an international reputation and has exhibited in Australia, Europe, the US and other Latin American countries. He and his wife, who assists him, welcomed us into their home, showed us their workshop and talked about his work.  He was garrulous and full of good humor and bonhomie.  We fell in love with them and his work and would have loved to have bought many of his pieces, but settled on one.  He merges ancient forms with modern coloration in his traditional work, but also has many abstract and whimsical figures as well.  Google his name and you can see some of his handiwork.

One Friday evening, we joined another new friend of ours, Gladys, at Nectar (a café supporting the Jazz Society of Cuenca) for an evening of jazz. The emcee is a superb jazz pianist and other entertainers included a great Cuban guitarist, an Ecuadorian older man who sang “Dos Gardenias” among other Spanish love songs, and an American woman who has a really unique style and sang a lot of our favorites like “Girl from Ipanema” and “That's All" (I can only give you country walks in springtime, and a hand to  hold when leaves begin to fall...”.

Last Friday, Cuencanas lighted 4000 lumineres

This past Friday we returned and the conductor of the Quito Symphony was in town and visited Nectar with some musicians and friends for an impromptu jam performance.  At 10:30 pm, it was hard to leave but we knew we had to get up to catch a bus for a four-hour ride to Alausi, a small village north of Cuenca, early on Saturday morning.