MORE rain, NEW friends, WALK along the river.

We've been busy this past week and it looks like more of the same next week. We have enjoyed meeting several new couples, some closer to making a decision on whether & where to move, some a few years out but on the same exploratory trip.

We've continue doing a lot of walking, at least for us. We aren't up to the 10k steps a day mark but doing way more than we did during our RV ife in the US. It feels good and having such a great city to walk in as well as several beautiful rivers to walk along, definitely helps.

So here's a synopsis of our week. We started out by meeting up with new friends, Heidi and Steve (Risa and Jerry on Facebook). We had lunch at Don Colon's and really enjoyed our time with them. They were supposed to meet other expat friends, Stephen and Nancy, at Tutto Fredo at two. Well, a few minutes after, Nancy and Steve show up at Don Colon. They knew where to find them. Great folks, still probably a year or two away from making any major changes.

We took off walking, made a bank deposit, walked some more, and I just had to snap this shot - gorgeous sunny day.

Then we decided to stop for ice cream... Ice cream (helado) is very popular here but we haven't indulged very often. We recently found La Fornace and tried the ice cream there. Our favorite is Malaga or Rum Raisin. It's sort of like butter pecan with sweet raisins in place of the pecans.

Oh, did I mention that it cost $1 each (cone or cup)?

We continued walking, deciding we needed a cup of coffee, we stopped at a little cafe we had passed before (the coffee smell was delicious) but never tried. Well, the coffee was wonderful, the price good at $1 (as most places are) and it was a good spot to wait out the torrential rain that arrived.

 

We were close to our bus stop and as we waited we noticed this adorable little firefighter costume in the shop across the street. Sorry the pic is so blurry!

Two days later we met up with another couple who were from Colorado Springs, John and Chris. We met at Fabiano's and spent more then five hours chatting, then made plans to meet at Popacuchu next week. Wonderful couple who have spent the last two+ months visiting the coast - we even discovered some mutual friends. They visited our apartment the next morning and we chatted for two hours...needless to say, we really hope they choose Cuenca when they make the final move. Of course, so do all the folks on the coast that they've met. LOL!

After they left, went for a walk up Ordoñez Lazo. We walked up to a local coffee shop that we had heard about, Coffee Brown. We will be back for sure. The food was DELICIOUS and the coffee was good. I had a turkey with passionfruit sandwich (the bread was amazing, not at all dry) and Stu had a chicken salad pita sandwich. While we were there, our visa facilitator, Maite Duran, dropped in and joined us. We had a wonderful chat. Oh, almost forgot to take the food photos. We will be back....

Headed back home, we opted for a walk along the river. It was a nice, sunny day and I grabbed a few shots of the turbulant water, churning from all the recent rains.

Remember we mentioned how big the trees are along the rivers?

I even shot a video of the lady washing her clothes as well as one of the rushing river. Hope these links work, just click the photo and you should be taken to our SmugMug gallery to see the videos. The clothes washing is the first one, the river is the second.

Ahhh, the grand adventure continues. Life is good!

Cuenca, Ecuador: Perceptions, Misconceptions and a Third Look

During our exploratory visit to Cuenca, we wrote a post about "Preconceptions, Misconceptions and New Viewpoints". In January 2014 we updated our thoughts in this post, "Perceptions, Misconceptions and Living Here". I thought it was time for another review so here is "Perceptions, Misconceptions and a Third Look".

1. Noise, pollution and traffic
   We notice the noise less and less all the time, I guess we have adapted to city life. The sporadic building alarm behind our new apartment bothers us the most (well, it bothers Stu).
   
   The traffic hasn't changed much, we still walk a lot as well as take the bus.
   
   Pollution is worse due to the construction for the Tranvia and our new location close to it. We expect 2015 to be the worst since construction will expand into El Centro.
    
2. Conservative dress
   I now feel quite comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt when going out but I have also added more solid color shirts (not blouses) and a couple pairs of Duluth Trading pants. Stu has done the same. We still wear athletic shoes most of the time although I love my Ariat slip-ons for days when I'm not walking a lot.
   
   We are seeing more and more casual dress in the teens, even shorts, so I anticipate the continuing trend towards this as those teens grow up.
    
3. Bad Coffee
   Very rarely do we get served bad coffee here. We love the coffee in the restaurants and love the dark roast beans we get at a local shop, Nucallacta.
    
4. Weather
   We still love the weather here and in our new apartment with almost wall-to-wall windows, even an overcast day doesn't seem gloomy. But we know the weather isn't for everyone. It can be a bit cool at times and of course the temperature FEELS warmer or cooler at times due to the altitude.
    
5. Stray Dogs
   Not much has changed here although there are several more rescue groups for dogs. Cats aren't seen as much...mostly with expats. We have seen more locals treating dogs as pets rather than an alarm system. We sometimes wonder if these are part of the influx of Ecuadorians returning from the US and Spain.
    
6. Finding our way around
   We're doing much better, the addresses make sense to us now and we can finally pronounce most of the street names. Of course, we still never remember the address of places we see...thank goodness we have friends that do!
    
7. Language Barrier
   This will be a continual learning process. Our two weeks of Spanish class helped and we both plan to keep working from our notes and workbooks (as well as using the online resources). I get compliments on my pronounciation, even when I'm not sure what I'm saying. So I guess that's a good thing.
    
8. Safety/Security
   We really don't worry about this, as we've stated before, we use common sense when we are out and about. Since we are now in an 8 floor building, we have security at the entrance 24/7. We still don't go out a lot in the evenings, but then we didn't do that in the US either.
    
9. Graffiti vs Street Murals
   We continue to see new murals around town and enjoy snapping photos of them. They are constantly changing. The tagging type graffiti continues but it also moves. Some of it has an artisitic quality, others, not so much. Part of city life...sigh.
    
10. Street/Road Condition & Pedestrians (Walking)
    Nothing has changed here, it's still dangerous to be a pedestrian and you have to continually watch where you walk as well as watch the traffic. But we have had several folks motion us to cross in front of their cars and we even had a bus driver do so. We thank them gratefully!

What we love about Ecuador...this list hasn't changed from our first post other than the addition of #10. Oh, and the list is in no particular order, that would be hard to do. There is something for everyone here in Ecuador whether you plan to vacation or retire. Give it a try!

1. The People 
2. The Greenery
3. The Climate 
4. The Fresh Fruits & Vegetables 
5. The Lack of Stress 
6. The Little Shops  & Markets
7. The Artisans 
8. The Family 
9. The Country 
10. The Diversity

Needless to say, we still love living here. This year we plan to take a mini-trip every month, out to a surrounding town or tourist attraction. We will continue to expand our Spanish vocabulary (grammar and tense are at the bottom of our list). We see something new and interesting daily, whether from our apartment window or traveling around town. Life is good! C'mon on down for a visit...

New Year's Eve - Ecuadorian Style!

I'm not sure where to start - what a fantastic evening we had. As mentioned in our post, Busy Holiday Season!, we had our little frog effigy set to burn away our 2014 troubles and woes while sending out wishes for a good 2015. We had a pretty sunset to set the mood.

We watched from our window as the folks at Joe's Secret Garden set off their effigies, just down the street from us..

We finally headed downstairs about 10PM to light ours. Little did we know how LONG it can take for even a small effigy to burn...maybe would have been faster if we had several as we saw in later photos, all stacked up in a teepee type pile as the folks at Joe's did. But, burn him we did, on the sidewalk across from our building...here are a few photos of the process. We set him up against the wall but finally had to lay him down to get the fire going better. Yes, it does look a little creepy....LOL!

Burn complete, we each took our turn at jumping over the ashes (no way were we going to jump over the live fire). Okay, so we stepped over them...but we each did it the requisite three times!

Once the ashes were no longer a danger, we headed back to the apartment to get a couple of beers and go up to our rooftop terrace. The light show was starting although sporadic. We love the view from up there...day or night! There was a halo around the moon and already there was a haze of smoke settling over the city.

By quarter of twelve it was getting more regular. At midnight for a full 20 minutes we had fireworks in a full circle around us. About a dozen folks joined us and we all ooh-ed and aah-ed over the display. We have never seen anything like it anywhere! It was hard to get get photos because of the need to set my zoom and then focus, but I did get a few.

We also watched dozens of lantern bags (luminaries?) set off to fly away...a gorgeous sight.

Friends have shared photos and videos of the scene in El Centro, our downtown area. Chaotic sensory overload - lots of fires from the effigy burning, loud music and fireworks. Too much for these two old farts but we sure enjoyed our evening. HAPPY NEW YEAR 2015!