At the top of the hill are panoramic views.
Cuenca, Ecuador has expanded as far north and south as you can see, stopped only by the Cajas National Reserve on one end and more mountains on the other. Red tile roofs and reddish bricks look like a bloody battlefield but there are no wars here.
Andres, our guide, gives a history lesson.
” There are about half a million people in Cuenca. The major industries are tourism, building construction and fabrication, and selling homes.”
You can see a few landmarks from this observation point, if you know them. You can see the twin blue striped domes of the New Church in Parque Calderone. You can see the soccer stadium and the goldish planet shaped planatarium that locates Gringoland.
” Ecuadorians are a clean people. We are taught to pick things up and be polite.” Andres says.
The funniest thing is when I tell him I am from New Mexico. His ears perk up.
” What city? ”
” Albuquerque. ”
He smiles and says ” Breaking Bad. ” We both laugh.
” The best thing, ” he advises, ” is to buy land. ” You buy the land for ten thousand, build a house, sell the house”
There are plenty of Ex-Pats into real estate in Ecuador, buying up farms in the Andes, old homes in Cuenca, beach bungalows in Salinas.
Riding real estate waves is a popular financial sport for people who have money but want more, and making money without working sparkles like your girl’s best diamond ring.
All these places with good real estate deals that market to foreigners had even better deals before they were discovered.
In Ecuador, as elsewhere, it is best to hire a lawyer to represent you because ownership of properties is convoluted and price is always negotiable.
Riding real estate waves is not always without wipe outs.
Up top, on our double decker bus, you have wind and sun, but, on this trip, you can’t stand up because low hanging electric wires will take off your neck. Our guide reminds us to watch for low hanging wires, watch the tree on your right, don’t stand too close to the edge of the top floor rail. From the second deck, we all see the city as we pass through, weaving, bobbing, climbing, descending and ascending hills.
This Cuenca city tour takes us in a circle from Parque Calderone to the Mirador de Turi and back. We leave the Historical District, cross into a newer part of the city, climb hills to the famous look out point, then return through the opposite end of the Historical District that we left from, ending back at our beginning.
Andres gives commentary in English and Spanish but mostly all you have time on this tour to do is point your camera, shoot, enjoy the sights.
The ride costs $8.00 U.S. and takes, with a half hour stop at Turi, two hours. Along the way, I see a Panama Hat Museo that might be fun to visit. The Museo Pumapungo looks important. There are lots of churches crying for admiring photographers..
Our guide tells us that Cuenca, a World Heritage City, has only five murders a year instead of Chicago’s five a day.
After driving in this mid day traffic, I would think bus drivers here would shoot at least one person a day so the murder rate in Cuenca wouldn’t sound fictitious.
On Wednesday thru Saturday nights, from 6:30-10:00 pm, on the 2nd floor of La Vina Restaurant, at Luis Cordero 5-101 y Juan Jaramillo, the Jazz Society of Ecuador holds forth.
The group this evening is piano, drums, bass, and a tenor saxophonist who play mainstream jazz.
Having a restaurant downstairs, I can’t not take photos for Leigh
She is an artist, and artists like to see visions on walls as well as canvas. Both floors of this establishment are awash with art and it seems like a bohemian French cafe where crazy impressionist painters sipped absinthe and shattered old school standards,
The songs the band plays were written fifty years ago, or longer – ” Stella by Starlight “, ” Summertime, ” ” Night in Tunisia, ” ” Love Walked In. ”
They are played with reverence but played tonight with more rhythmic twists and subtle harmonic modulations than when they were new kids on the block. This is music I listened to while peers swooned over Elvis, Bo Didley, and Little Richard.
I never figured to hear live jazz in Cuenca, Ecuador.
The art on the walls is icing on the cake.
In the historical district are public mercados where vendors sell fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, and sundries from little stalls inside huge open buildings. There are modern groceries in Cuenca but visitors, and locals, like to shop in this old way.
On the square outside the Mercado are even smaller vendors selling religious artifacts, sunglasses, performing music, socializing, and today watching men change an electrical light on a next door building with a bucket crane.
Pigeons waddle in large groups on the plaza and lift into the air when little boys run through them with arms extended like airplane wings.
I have been told that bartering in Cuenca is the rule, instead of the exception.
It isn’t crowded this morning but women reach out to engage me as I walk down the aisles. They know if they get my attention, move me to look at their produce, I will buy something. The lady I buy the pineapple from, sells me, in quick succession, a papaya, a bunch of bananas, a bag of apples.
This trip to the market takes two hours.
Saving a few dollars on groceries may not be a good deal when I eat up 1- 12th of my day in the bargaining.
When people are shut out from having a say about what happens to them, by those they have elected, protests are inevitable.
Some protests move into chaos and violence,some are contained, others are snuffed out like the tip of a burning candle.
I make myself invisible, slip away, and don’t get home till late because streets are blocked off, going and coming.
Protests seldom lead to solutions, but they create emotions.
Governments can be toppled on emotion.
No government exists that will give us what we want without taking away what we need.
n.
Recent Comments