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Published: October 22nd 2011
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Wow... it's been two months since our last entry. It isn't that anything has been wrong, it's just that things have been a bit hum-drum. First of all, until the past week, Cuenca has been grey every single day for months. Our new apartment has lots of big windows and a great view of the mountains. For most of the 3 months we've lived here, we've watched the daily procession of low lying clouds floating by, every day, punctuated by brief periods of rain and of sunshine. It wasn't really cold (although others might disagree), but it was oppressively blah.
Also, from the middle of August through the beginning of September, most Ecuadorians take a vacation. Even though it's a rainy time even at the beach, families flock there for a break. Which meant that Cuenca was quiet, but it wasn't appealing to go on a trip and fight the crowds for the same crappy weather. And since most of our time has been spent working on finding jobs on the Internet, day-to-day life has pretty much floated by.
This isn't to say that we haven't gotten in a couple of day trips (besides url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BaƱos,_Azuay]the nearby Banos hot baths).
Chris took a bus to
Incapirca, an Incan ruin near the city of Canar, a couple hours out of Cuenca. Even though they're considered Ecuador's best ruins, Justin turned up his nose, given that he'd seen Chichen Itza and Tikal, and will probably soon see Machu Picchu. Chris enjoyed the tour, although she confirmed it was only necessary for ruins junkies like her, or for people who've never seen Latin American ruins before. She had a good tour guide, but also somehow got food poisoning from a cheese sandwich, so Justin didn't feel too left out.
We also took a trip to the Sunday markets in
Gualaceo and
Chordeleg. We had heard there was a craft market in the former and a jewelry market in the latter, and that Sunday was the day to go. When we arrived in Gualaceo (about 90 minutes from Cuenca), we discovered an incredibly charming small city, with a beautiful park along the river and a lively central food market. However, the small building that held the craft market was closed. Moving on to Chordeleg (right outside Gualaceo), we found a small town whose square is surrounded by numerous jewelry shops. Chris got a couple of things and we enjoyed walking around, but it didn't seem particularly set
up for Sunday either.
No matter how long the rainy season, you can always count on paperwork to keep things interesting in Ecuador. Back in March, Justin was offered a course to teach at the University of Cuenca. In September, he was finally told when it would start... six weeks later, two days after our visas expired (this is actually a good bit of notice... it's not unusual to be hired for courses the week before.) Because you need to get your paperwork in a month before visa expiration for extensions, there wasn't time to jump through all the hoops to get a work visa, and it turned out a cultural exchange visa wasn't applicable. We figured our fallback was a student visa, a popular choice for gringos in Cuenca. However, when we went to purchase classes, we were told that the government had just suspended new student visas and were making the schools recertify. The guy at the visa office suggested that, since we'd never gotten a three-month visa at the border (we got our initial visa in the U.S.), we should check with the military police. The guy at the military police office fiddled with his computer
for a while, and told us that we should be able to get three more months if we cross into Peru and come back.
However, we've learned in our 9 months to read between the Ecuadorian lines. "Will there be any problem coming back in?"... "No (it won't be a problem for me because it'll be someone else's problem.)" "We'll be able to get back to Ecuador?"... "Yes (you will be far away from here.)" So we're leaving on Monday to cross into Peru, spending a week at the beach, and trying to come back on Saturday for the Inca's Halloween party. We put our odds around 50%, which obviously means that we have to bring our stuff with us (although our friend Jim Evans has agreed to hold a couple of boxes of ours for shipping, so we don't have to carry everything).
If we don't get back in, we'll have to find another city in Peru (we have a couple of good possibilities... we just need to decide if we want to go with the mountains again, or try out beach living). We've finally figured out that most of our expat friends make a living online,
whether through online teaching, or travel sites, or freelancing. Given the low cost of living, jobs that seem like little money in the U.S. are worthwhile here. So we've been focusing on finding online opportunities, which can obviously be done anywhere with decent Internet (Chris has recently been working with
Into Latin America, a travel site that puts together South American itineraries).
While we really hope we get back into Ecuador, we wouldn't be heartbroken about trying out Peru either. We'd love to have another 3 months in Cuenca, mostly for timing reasons (it'd be nice to be somewhere solid while we set up Internet revenue; the Cuenca holidays are in November, and we'd been looking forward to Christmas here). But, we'll probably be moving on after the New Year anyway, unless something compelling comes up. We've loved our time in Cuenca, we've met some great people, and there's no doubt that Cuenca is beautiful and livable. But it's not a place that has sucked us in for the long term. It has a lot going for it, but there hasn't been that spark that comes when you fall completely in love with a place. And since we hear that Peru has much better food and cheaper living, we're more
than open to giving it a try.
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