Now that we have been in Cuenca for two years, we are going on a Random Walk of thoughts about living here.  Part 1 of this walk was posted yesterday.  We’ll open today with a collection of mosaics on walls around Cuenca, shown above.

Perhaps one of the largest changes for us in coming to Cuenca is our social calendar.  I rarely mention this in our blog, because I don’t want to put guests on the spot, and doubt you are interested in who was over for dinner last night.  In California though, we would have guests over for dinner maybe 3 or 4 times per year.  Last week, we were with guests 5 times in 4 days (one lunch and four dinners) within a single week.  Though that was a particularly busy week, we have had guests over 97 times in the two years we have been here (yep, I keep a list, with what we serve, so we don’t cook the same meal if they come multiple times ☺).

I had expected to get more involved with volunteer activities once I retired. We have done some, but so far only photographically, providing publicity photos for the Alliance Francais Music Festival, CinterAndes, Madre Tierra Festival, and the Cuenca Art Walk.  We have recently agreed to start working with a local orphanage as a guest chef, and we will see how that goes.

Which brings up the next big change.  I started cooking in 2002, when Pauline (Evelyn’s sister) jokingly gave me The Four Ingredient Cookbook. After Evelyn had done all the cooking for 30 years, it seemed fair for me to start that chore.  Though I found I was reasonably good at cooking, it was just that — a chore.  Now that we are retired in Cuenca, it has become more of a passion.  I now try at least one new recipe each week. Not all are winners, but a surprisingly large percentage are quite good and are then made multiple times.  I have posted a few of our favorites in my blog over the past couple years.

Perhaps the largest surprise is that I have not really done very much with photography since arriving here, other than for posting in this blog.  Without the constant high level competition of the Berkeley Camera Club, I find I have little motivation to do highly creative photography anymore.  There is a camera club in Cuenca, but their quality is nowhere near the level of the BCC, and they generally don’t like Photoshop, which is used heavily in all my creative efforts.

Our Spanish is definitely improving, though much slower than we would like.  We both take classes each week. We can now hold basic conversations with taxi drivers, or with our few Cuencanan friends that do not speak English.  It will be a long time, if ever, before we can have a free flowing rapid discussion in any language other than English though.  Fortunately, there are a lot of expats in Cuenca, and we meet new friends every month.  A few are also leaving.  One couple moved to Ireland earlier this year, and another friend is moving to Portugal soon. A couple others have returned to the States.

Which brings us to our travel.  When we were working, we traveled a lot, but always 3 weeks then rush back to work, and only once per year.  Now we are free to spend more time when we wish, and to travel more than once a year.  In the two years here, we have made separate trips to California, Florida, Peru, Manhattan and New Jersey, Iceland, Argentina, and throughout much of Ecuador.  We have been partially constrained by Ecuadorian immigration law for our first two years of our resident visa. In January, when our visa 2nd anniversary occurs, we will be allowed to be out of the country for longer periods.  We already have plans for trips to Colombia, Turkey and Europe in the coming year.

I can’t very well talk about our experience in Cuenca without mentioning our apartment.  We are in probably the best part of town, on the Southern edge of the Old Town, known as El Centro, in a spacious 4 bedroom penthouse.  We estimate there are roughly 30 restaurants within a two block radius (a future blog will actually count and report on them), many of which are quite excellent. We are only three blocks from the main square (Parque Calderon), half a block from the Jazz Society, four blocks to the local mercado (where I buy enough fresh fruits and veggies to fill two large bags each week for about $6), six blocks to SuperMaxi (where I get milk, meat and other items weekly), etc.  No need for a car, when the bus costs 12 cents or a taxi costs $1.50 anywhere in town.

We did have a frustrating period earlier this year when our elevator broke down.  After much negotiation and payment up front, we finally got it working again… after three months of needing to take the 5 flights of stairs to get to our penthouse apartment.  We were thankful the building was not higher for that three months…!  Our internet connection is also maddeningly slow. Even though we pay for 10 Mbps, there are days when it is only 30 Kbps — slower than the dial-up lines we used 30 years ago.  We have been told that fiber optic cable is supposed to be laid to our building, but it was to be here last February, and it is still not available.  Neighboring streets have gotten it in recent months though, so we still have hope.

I could keep going with more random thoughts about living here, but I think this post is already getting too long.  For summary, we are quite happy here — more so than either of us really expected to be.  We may not live here forever, but for now, this is home, and we like it that way.