Time for some Pros and Cons on moving to and living in Cuenca, Ecuador where I’ve lived these past eight years. I’ve told friends for some months now that once the worse restrictions of this so-called pandemic have passed there will be a surge of expats into Cuenca. My reasons for thinking this is that many Americans will find they are no longer employable for any number of reasons. They will be faced with a retirement earlier than they expected and when they run the numbers they will see they cannot afford to live in the U.S. except as a pauper. So here are the Pros and Cons of Cuenca.
Pros – 1. This is a traditional society. It’s known as the Bible belt of Ecuador. Frankly, men are men, women are women. Sunday is family day as it used to be in the U.S. Courtesy and respect towards strangers is the norm. Vulgarity is unknown in my experience. 2. Cuenca is cheap. The cost of living here is roughly one third of what it is in the U.S., perhaps now with runaway inflation there it could be one quarter. You will live an upper middle class or upper class lifestyle here. Two friends of mine lived her five years or so, never had to touch their money in the U.S. and recovered from their losses in 2008, something that would never have happened had they stayed in the U.S. 3. Medical care is excellent, especially basic care. You will experience what it’s like to have a doctor be concerned only for you, not influenced by government rules, insurance restrictions or fear of a lawsuit. It is an eye-opening experience. Nearly every drug you’ll want is available without prescription, and cheap. 4. GMOs and antibiotics are not used in growing or raising food. They are prohibited by the constitution. Vegetables are wonderful. They are grown within five miles of Cuenca. There are no feed lots in the country. Chickens are not crammed into cages and live in the dark. The difference in taste, and in your weight, are amazing. 5. Speaking of weight. Because the city is over 8,000 feet above sea level which increases metabolism, because there is about one-third less oxygen digestion is less efficient and because you will walk so much more, you will lose weight. Typically, men lose 15 pounds in the first months. Now if you insist on eating out every day and persist in guzzling beer and wine and take a taxi every 15 feet you won’t drop a pound. But with little effort you can drop 30 to 40 pounds. I’ve noticed this doesn’t seem to happen so much with women. 6. Cuenca is the right size. It’s reportedly at half a million but that includes a vast area around the city. The heart of the city has about 100,000. 7. You don’t need a car. Few expats have them as they are such a hazzle. Taxis are cheap and plentiful, the bus system has its challenges so most expats don’t use it but I do and have no problems, we have a state-of-the-art light rail system, there is just no reason to own a car and it is liberating. There’s more Pros but those are likely the high points.
Cons – Keep in mind that more than half of expats who retire here move within two years. They just don’t find what they want here. Remember, no matter where you live you take yourself and your marriage. I’ve seen more than one 50 marriage fall apart under the pressure of constant contact and a few others that should fall apart. 1. There is more pollution in the very center of the city than I like which is one reason we live on the edge of the center by the river with its steady breeze. Pollution has improved enormously in recent years and its likely you’ll not notice it at all. The city is committed to reducing it even more. 2. There are too many cars on the streets. Ecuadorians love their cars. You won’t. 3. Cuenca is hard to get to and from. There are no direct flights here from the U.S. and won’t be for the foreseeable future. The advantage here is that we aren’t overwhelmed with expats. 4. You need at least some Spanish to get along. With smart phones this isn’t the challenge it once was but the more Spanish you speak and understand the more you’ll enjoy living here. 5. Specialty healthcare is suspect. I don’t know what to make of it as I’ve never needed it. I know one man who had a hip replaced here and is thrilled. Most expats return to the U.S. for such a procedure. The same for bypass heart surgery. There is a state-of-the-art cancer treatment hospital here. I knew one woman who moved here to take advantage of it. Most people I know return to the U.S. for treatment. 6. It can be boring. You need to be self-contained. You will have full access to all the U.S. media and entertainment but that may not be enough. It’s all but impossible to do charity work here and it is impossible to run a company. They don’t permit competition. There’s only one golf course and you have to pay $22,000 to join the country club where it’s at and recently they don’t seem to want to let expats join.
Finally, even though sixty percent of expats intending to stay here for life leave within two years, ninety percent are gone within six years. There are reasons. I’ve listed a few. But for myself and my wife it’s been paradise and having traveled the world there is nowhere else I’d like to live.
The agenda to drive universal vaccinations of the populace has forced the medical community and politicians into a corner when it comes to the question of natural immunity. They can’t say it’s not a reasonable question, nor can they say it’s already been answered properly. They just say this organization or that doctor or some study shows that even those with natural immunity must still get vaccinated. When pressed, they invoke the logical fallacy known as begging the question; they use the affirmative answer to the question of whether people who have recovered from Covid-19 should get vaccinated as the evidence that they should. The numbers don’t back up this claim. In fact, those who have recovered from Covid have far greater immunity than those who are simply vaccinated. Perhaps a quarter of the U.S. population has already had Covid and doesn’t require the jab. So the logical question is: Why insist on it? The answer, of course, is population control and maintaining a perceived state of fear to advance a political agenda. Read it all here. 
With my third entry in this ongoing series let me go to the beginning. Why become an expat? Why leave the country of your birth and nationality to live among strangers in a very different culture, perhaps one with earthquakes and volcanoes? My primary reason for moving abroad was that I always wanted to. I grew up reading Burroughs, Doyle [his lost world stories, not Sherlock Holmes], and later Graham Greene whose books were largely about expats getting into trouble. My goal almost from the first was to retire to another country. As I grew older and saw how narrow the lives of most of the elderly were, primarily from lack of money, I became convinced I didn’t want that for myself.
On April 30, 1977, 14 courageous women set aside fear and their families’ warning to leave their homes and confront the military dictatorship that had stolen and murdered their children. The went to the rotary outside the Presidential Palace and with signs and photos began a procession of protest. That day marked the first weekly march by the mothers of Argentina’s “disappeared” against the dictatorship that had carried out the systematic murder of thousands including their children. This simply action, repeated again and again, led to the collapse of the government and the restoration of democratic rule. Since then more than 1,000 torturers and killers have been tried and 700 sentenced. The fate of most, though not all, of the “disappeared” has been established.
One of the lessons we’ve all learned this year is that ‘experts’ have been utterly politicized. And if you aren’t one of the experts who go along with the PC ones you are deleted from Social Media, denigrated by MSM or professionally destroyed. I no longer believe anything I read that conforms to the PC take on events. But worse, I can no longer trust those in opposition as they seem to have their own agenda. We are cast adrift in world determined to make us all victims living in a perpetual state of panic and fear. Read more here. 
In the 1950’s I owned our black and white television set late night Friday and Saturdays after my folks went to bed. Whatever movie was showing, I watched. In those patriotic days the set was full of movies made during or about the Second World War. Heady stuff for one so young. A few of those movies have stuck with me over the years, Thirty Seconds of Tokyo, for one where the director had to good sense to create tension by omitting the nearly obligatory music for the run to Japan. All you hear are the clipped voices of the crew and the relentless drone of the airplane engines. Then there was The Steel Lady with Rod Cameron. It’s a B movie and until last night I was at a loss to understand the hold it had on me. Without exaggeration I’ve chased this move for 40 years, first on late night television [again], then on cable, then on VHS, then DVD, finally on the Internet. No luck. Until…. last night. I searched the title as I have every few months and there it was, in full and in surprising clarity, on YouTube. And I was not disappointed.
It looks like Bill Gates has got his wish: population reduction, even elimination. And it didn’t take a toxic vaccine that diminishes a woman’s fertility rate. Turns out we’ve been doing this to ourselves for decades with no end in sight. At least since the 1970’s the ability of men and women to produce children has been in steady decline until today it is at half the rate it once was. Since 1973 male sperm is down 60%. A woman today in her twenties has the same fertility rate as her grandmother did at age 35. In addition the size of a penis has diminished as has the size of testes. It turns out all the things we depend on for our quality of life are filled with toxins that take a relentless toll on us over the years and our bodies don’t shed them. They just keep building up. These toxins are everywhere. They are in plastics, clothes, cleaning products, fragrances, soaps, electronics and carpets, just to name a few.
One of the major changes for North Americans [I use this term as about 10% of expats here are Canadian] have in adjusting to Cuenca is the food and eating habits. Ecuadorians eat virtually no breakfast, either nothing or perhaps a role and cup of coffee. Dinner is little more than a snack, often corn bread much like the outer layer of chile releno in the American Southwest and again a cup of coffee. The main meal is in the middle of the day, served between one and three in the afternoon. Expats typically show up at noon and often have to wait but more restaurants have become accustomed to our strange habits and are ready serve so early a meal.
This will be the first of an ongoing series about living as an expat in the Andes in South America. I had thought to start this earlier but political events in America have distracted me but I’m finally moving on. I’d also thought I’d go about this logically, beginning with why become an expat, but in the end it turns out this will be a bit of a ramble. I’ll get to all the big questions but it will take several postings.