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.
The midday meal is called the almurezo. It consists of a watered down fruit drink, a wonderful and large bowl of soup, rice, a very small dinner salad, then either fish, chicken or beef in a small portion. In some cases you’ll get a modest dessert. The price runs between $2 and $3.50 with the dessert more likely at the higher end. This is not gourmet cuisine but I’ve never had an almurezo I didn’t enjoy.
Quality food in South America is to be had in Peru which has made it a matter of national honor. The best meal I’ve eaten in SA was in Cuzco, in a restaurant interestingly enough run by a German. I had two excellent meals in Buenos Aires but my single meal in Lima was very good if not better than these. Expats returning from Lima though universally praise the cuisine. The Ecuadorians do an adequate job but that’s about it. The high end restaurants however are excellent though they charge North American prices.
Our doctor advised us when we first arrived to change our eating habits and so we have. I can scarcely eat a full dinner these day having eaten my main meal at midday. Most expats eat both and you see them trudging around thirty or forty pounds overweight.
Food costs here are roughly one third what they are in the U.S., even less if you frequent the mercados which we do. Nearly all the food consumed locally is raised within ten miles of the city. No GMO or antibiotics are used. The quality of the vegetables is outstanding. You’ll recover the taste of a real tomato and of potatoes. Chicken is excellent. I like the beef but there are no feed lots so it’s a bit chewy. Fish I avoid as it is trucked up from the coast or grown locally with mixed results.
I consider the quality of food here to be one of the great joys in living here.
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.
Venezuela, once the wealthiest country in South America, has been systematically looted and misgoverned by leftists for decades. The economic results have been inevitable. 
It was 88 years ago next month that the Nazis in Germany began publicly burning books of which they disapproved. It was not enough that they be sequestered or removed from libraries and bookstores; they had to be physically exterminated in a public orgy of flames. As long as I can remember, American libraries have displayed those books and urged readers to add them to their reading list. Those days of literary freedom are well behind us. Today we are witnessing the same burning, only digitally, as books are removed from sale and we are largely silent as were the good Germans of the 1930s. After all, no one was coming after their books or, more importantly, after them. But given time that’s exactly what the Nazis did. As our cultural heritage and history are being destroyed and we remain silent there will in time be no one to blame but ourselves for what follows. 
Johns Hopkins doctor Marty Makary has pointed out that Covid 19 cases are down 77% over the past six weeks. The number “plummeting much faster than experts predicted” because, “natural immunity from prior infection is far more common than can be measured by testing.” He adds, “Covid will be mostly gone by April, allowing Americans to resume normal life.” This is not vaccine related.
Today we celebrate George Washington’s birthday, though in some places it is known as Presidents Day despite the fact there are a few recent former presidents who don’t deserve celebrating. Washington grew up in a slave owning family and at a time and place where slave owning was the norm. In fact, to that point, slavery was practiced continuously in every place of the world with few exceptions. As a leader of a new nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” owning slaves was clearly in opposition to these high ideals. Washington wasn’t the only one of course. During the last 20 years of his life Washington struggled with the moral conflict. He was a decent slave owner, if such can be said about someone owning another human being. No one asked the slaves how they felt about it. He refused to sell slaves as he would not break up families. He confessed in a letter that he wanted to free his own slaves but most of the slaves at Mt. Vernon belonged to the estate of his wife’s first husband. He could not free them, not could she. To make the situation even more complicated his slaves were intermarried with hers and drawing the line of who he could free and who he could not was all but impossible. He resolved the issue by freeing his slaves in his will.
Our dependence on lithium batteries is coming with a high and unappreciated cost. We use them everywhere and soon electric vehicles will be gobbling up the greatest part of them. This headlong charge into electric vehicles is fool hearty and stupid. First, there isn’t enough electricity to support them. You can’t charge them with windmills and solar panels. The electricity is going to come from fossil fuels unless the Greens want to go with nuclear power. Didn’t think so. Second, batteries are highly toxic and will be major polluters both where the metals for them are mined and where they are disposed of after use. Read more at 
I’ve long felt that Covid 19 was being manipulated from the first for political ends. This was confirmed when the so-called medical experts were taking political stands that had nothing to do with a medical response. We have many viruses for which we have no vaccine, why should this one be the exception? But, no, we have several vaccines but they are going to have to be fine tuned as the virus mutates. I expect 2021 to simply be a repeat of what we’ve just gone through. This is the big takeover, with government everywhere assuming new powers over our lives. Glad to be living in a remote city in the Andes. Here’s