Our container was loaded today in Berkeley, and will now work its way towards our new home in Cuenca. It is both a relief, and a bit humbling to see everything we own fit in little more than half a 20 foot shipping container… Either way though, our life in Ecuador is starting to more […]
Visa Indefinida
We got our resident visas today! We are now legal Ecuadorians! We were also told to pick up our cedulas a week from Friday, which will be the final document to complete our legal integration into Ecuador. The process took four hours today, and seems that it shouldn’t have taken more than an half hour. […]
Visa is Approved !
Cuenca Immigration Office Our Ecuadorian resident visa has been approved! As with all things government, there are still some paperwork steps before we have it in our hands, but we received an approval email two days ago, and were told to go to the immigration office today to get the next phase of papers to […]
Lawsuit!
Lawsuits are not as common in Ecuador as they are in the US, but we just got a first-hand experience to show they are do exist. We have read recently that labor suits are becoming a hot item, with several expats telling stories (sometimes second or third hand) about household help (maids, cooks, gardeners) going […]
Let The Baking Begin!
We bought a condo earlier this year, and moved into it in October. We have loved the unit and its location, and one of the advantages was that it came fully furnished. The prior owners were returning to England after decades in South America and left us everything. Most of the stuff they left is […]
Joys of Ecuadorian Internet
Last year when we were in Cuenca for three months, we had multiple times when our Internet access disappeared — sometimes for a few hours and twice for multiple days. Once we had control over our own condo this time, we chose to connect two different Internet providers. We now have both ETAPA and PuntaNet. […]
Random Walk Through Cuenca #3 (Dec 2013)
View through our condo living room window Last year I wrote a “Random Walk Through Cuenca” post after about a month here, and another one a couple weeks later. These were collections of random thoughts I had about Cuenca that did not warrant a blog post unto themselves, but were things I wanted to pass […]
Gourmet Ghetto in Cuenca
One of the primary requirements we had for any retirement location was that it be “walkable.” In searching cities, we found that word had very different meanings in different places. Many US locations that we considered, talked about being “walkable neighborhoods,” when what they meant was “you can walk to a strip mall not too […]
How Many Keys???
When we lived in California, I had two key rings. One for my motorcycle (house and bike keys) and one for my car (house, car, storage shed, car alarm). Since we do not plan on owning a car in Ecuador, I expected to be able to simplify my pocket and have only a single […]
Doctors, Lawyers, Carpenters, Electricians, Oh My
View from our living room window looks over the rooftops to the iconic “New Church” trio of blue domes. The last couple days have been a flurry of dealing with professionals of all types. We came to Ecuador, fully expecting locals to work on “Latin Time.” We had heard many horror stories of people making […]