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This morning I walked to the 10 Agosto Public Mercado nearby for a Limpia , or traditional cleansing. While I waited for my turn, this mother had her child receive a Limpia. She also runs an egg along the body. Then she cracks the egg to diagnose what else is needed. She dabbed a cream on forehead and belly button, and then rubbed the liquid on my legs and arms. The whole thing was less than ten minutes. Very vigorous and fairly intimate for a public place. It was how I felt afterwards that made me so glad for the experience. Bright and shiny as a new penny. Young, innocent, easy, lighter. Much, much lighter, almost a sense of floating. Not the physical denseness I was used to. Clean, clean, clean! Your email address will not be published. Testimonials Your poetry is a balm, a reminder to bring me back to my spiritual center, to my real Self. Lynn, Durham NC. Your images burn into my mind, settle in me like a kiss or a dark chocolate. Rand Hall, Alabama. Poems for Flourishing is exactly what we all need right now, a connection to the whole, from the smallest things we see in nature to galaxies! Pat Christy, North Carolina author. I love your fearless writing! Jaes Seis, Shamanic Healing Practitioner. Read more…. Leave a Reply Cancel reply I welcome your comments Your email address will not be published. Optimizer WordPress Theme.

10 Things I Love to do in Cuenca, Ecuador - International Living Countries

Cuenca buying blow

But my all-time, short-term rental experience was the three months that I recently spent in Manta. Then, a month later, I was diagnosed with pneumonia, but antibiotics cleared that up. Then, a few weeks later, I realized that I was gradually starting to feel worse and worse. These symptoms and others often left me unable to perform even the most basic of tasks. Just speaking in my language was a challenge, let alone trying to speak Spanish with my Ecuadorian family! After my diagnosis, I did a lot of reading and research on the disease, and one article was based on a study done right here in Ecuador, concluding that people moving from a higher elevation to a lower one experienced significant relief from their symptoms. The article also stated that recovery from long COVID appeared to happen more quickly at lower elevations. But I was feeling worse all the time, developing new and more serious symptoms, and I felt like I needed to take some sort of action if I was ever going to get any better. So after nearly ten months of feeling like an extra on an episode of The Walking Dead , I decided to go down to Manta and spend a little time there. I immediately noticed that I had more energy, was able to think more clearly, and that many of my other symptoms had either disappeared or had lightened up considerably. About a month later, I went back down again and spent twelve days there, noting the same results. So after a lot of soul-searching and talking with the family, we finally decided that a move to Manta would be the smart thing for me to do. We had planned to stay there for at least a year, or maybe sooner if I felt well enough to move back to Cuenca. Bottom line, I was thinking that if I felt so bad that I had almost no quality of life, I should take advantage of something that makes me feel better — right? And why so soon? Cuenca had been my home for nearly ten years, and there I was, on the coast, finding expat life to be very different than it is here in Cuenca. I also admit to having my own bias when it comes to my preference for Cuenca, but I will attempt to be as objective as possible as I share my experiences with you. Initially, on those first couple of trips to Manta, I mostly liked what I saw. And as the inhabitants of that area are generally larger and taller than mountain folk, I was able to find clothes that fit me there! Then there was Megamaxi in the mall, a MegaKywi across from the mall, plus a very large Coral on the other side of town. All in all, I could find almost everything I needed while living there, but when I needed to do some work on my guitar, the music stores were very sparsely stocked, lacking many of the most basic items that guitarists need. Fortunately, one of the shops directed me to a luthier who did the work for me, charging me only ten dollars! Half of Nuevo Tarqui is your standard concrete structure, separated into smaller cubicles and larger open areas. But the part I found fascinating was the side where everything is built out of containers! Even a grocery store and a bank! This city of over , people feels more like 15 or 20 smaller towns that were all cobbled together to form what we now know as Manta. Each little area has its commercial area, though there is a greater density of shopping options in the area centered around Calle 13, including the municipal mercado. Oh, and Calle 13 is intersected at one point by Avenida 13! That makes it a wee bit easier to navigate Manta, but overall, I found myself turned around and disoriented every time I tried to get somewhere without my GPS. Then there was the relatively cheap and plentiful and fresh seafood! Then there were the langostinos in a small restaurant in Santa Marianita , about a minute drive from Manta. He told us that the gangs are hitting up every business along the beaches, demanding protection money — or else! Then, because we lived very close to the university, there were so many restaurants within walking distance that it would have taken a year to sample them all. So for fast food like this, the prices when compared to Cuenca were maybe five to ten percent higher, which was certainly doable for us. My favorite place for an amazing breakfast was Dulce y Cremoso in the mall. This was also just slightly higher than an equivalent breakfast at, say, Sunrise Cafe in Cuenca. On my earlier scouting visit, I went to one of the expat brunches at the Donkey Den in Santa Marianita , but those have been discontinued until further notice. Overall, there were many, many restaurants in Manta, but not with the same diversity and assortment that we have in Cuenca. Nowadays, Cuenca has restaurants that cater to all manner of dining preferences: Indian, Mexican, Colombian, Venezuelan, Korean, North American, and much more. I should mention that Santa Marianita has an Indian restaurant, but I never had the opportunity to try it. But overall for dining options and pricing, Cuenca takes the prize. There are apparently bats all over Manta, or at least closer to the coast itself. My first sunset at Playa Murcielago was spectacular, and really sorta won me over — for a while. But this particular beach has harder, packed-down sand, and lots of small rocks, and depending on whose data you read, the ocean water there is not the cleanest in that general area. The good news is that Manta is right on the Ruta del Spondylus , and there are several nicer, cleaner beaches within a short drive of Manta. It seems to me that more expats own their properties in Manta than in Cuenca, though I have no data to back that up. A little farther down from the main beach in Manta is the fish market and the boatyard, the latter of which I found fascinating. They were mostly repairing and retrofitting older boats to get them back out on the water, but some were simply wrecks, left there for spare parts, or simply to rot. One was a temporary home for a Venezuelan family until someone set it on fire. Between the boat yards and Playa Murcielago, the beach was extremely dirty, covered with trash and dead sea animals that had washed ashore. Fortunately, just a short drive away is Playa Santa Marianita , which is much cleaner, has larger waves for surfers and seems to be a Mecca for kitesurfers. This beach has a long string of good and reasonably priced restaurants and is the home to several expats who live in the gated community there. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, the restaurants and other businesses there are being pressured by the local gangs to pay protection money, so visiting these areas is a bittersweet experience. Another favorite beach I found there was San Lorenzo. It has some impressive rock formations, a few of which you can only visit when the tide is at its lowest, and then only for a short time. I took this next photo from inside a shallow cave in that same area. But be careful! And I have the scars to prove it! But San Lorenzo has some great surfing waves, more kitesurfers, and a whole lot of natural beauty. But what can you do at the beach? Well, you can swim, you can eat, or you can work on your tan… but then what? And I was correct in that assumption. But while the number of vehicles is less dense, they make up for it by having no real idea of how to drive! At least in Cuenca, drivers mostly stay in their lanes, or flip on a turn signal when changing lanes. In Manta, cars drove down the middle of the road, straddling the lanes, or would randomly float from one lane to the other, then back again. One thing you should be aware of when driving through Manta is that Google Maps will take you down dirt roads, down alleys, up very steep hills, and through some very dodgy-looking parts of Manta while en route to your destination. It was disconcerting at times, but eventually, it started to feel normal. And the spread-out and fractured nature of the cityscape there almost requires that you use Maps for several months or longer until you learn your way around. One big plus for expats in Manta is that the airport there is now an international airport. For now, you either have to fly to Quito or get a ride to Guayaquil from Cuenca to catch an international flight. Just one note, if you plan on driving yourself to Manta from Cuenca: The odds of you getting stopped and shaken down by the transit cops are about 70 percent. But any and every strategy you come up with can lead to unexpected consequences, so I would rather not recommend one approach over another. I was told ahead of time to expect housing to cost a lot more in Manta. We had a pool to share with the other occupants, plus air conditioning in the bedrooms. But Manta is spread out, and a few of these places were nearly halfway to Portoviejo. During my two initial visits to Manta, I never felt particularly unsafe while walking the streets from my hotel to the mall. Later, after my move, I still never felt like I was at risk for trouble when walking outside, even at night. Well, I had enough of a favorable impression regarding Manta to pick up and physically move myself and my family there. Manta is a very different city than Cuenca, but it seemed to have enough going for it to make a decent home during my convalescence from long COVID. As a result, we packed up, sold off a lot of things we no longer needed, and found a reasonable mover to take us to Manta. Again, I want to point out that returning to Cuenca was always part of the plan. There were even moments when we thought we might be able to live there indefinitely, but the general plan was to stay there for at least a year — but plans can change when things go sideways. This was an act of revenge for something that had transpired earlier between the police and some gang members. Then, less than a month after arriving in Manta to live, someone assassinated the mayor, Augustin Intriago, who was much beloved by the people of Manta. He was young, smart, ostensibly honest, and had done a lot to improve life and living in the city. Four of us tried to pry them apart, hitting the other dog with broomsticks, throwing water at him, etc. Then, finally, the other dog got tired and let go of Sisko, who had major wounds all around his neck and shoulders. We rushed him to the vet, where he needed stitches and various other treatments. We were all in a state of shock, and at least two of us were suffering from our own dog-bites that we received while trying to separate the two. We did manage to recoup those fees when we moved out. In short, things would never be the same with her, and that cast a very long shadow over our time in Manta. It can change from minute to minute, or from hour to hour. Dressing in layers is a must, as is carrying an extra jacket and an umbrella in your backpack. The average daytime temperature in Cuenca is in the mid-to-high 60s, and nighttime can be downright frigid at times. I have an electric mattress pad and a thick goose-down comforter, so my bed is warm and comfy, too. One of the most shocking things about being back in Cuenca is the cold toilet seats — a real eye-opener!! And from what I was hearing from friends and family in Cuenca, it was raining quite a bit there for a while. But I grew up in a state with four seasons, and spring and autumn were always my favorite times of the year. Now, in Manta, when I felt unbearably hot, I could only remove so much clothing! This is due to something known as the Humboldt Current, which cools and dries the air in the Manta area, and along other spots along the western coast of South America. This makes it cooler than it should be for its location, and it also reduces the amount of rain those areas usually get. But I still found Manta uncomfortably hot during the day, with daytime temperatures in the mid-to-high 80s, and an average humidity level of around 78 percent. We did have a small shared swimming pool out back, and that came in very handy on those days when the heat felt like it was going to swallow us alive. My alternative to the pool was to stay inside and use the air conditioning in our bedrooms because the main living area was not air-conditioned. This makes it feel either colder or hotter than the ambient temperature, so this is worth keeping in mind. Actually, in Manta, our dehumidifier gave us more relief than the fan, and it was able to pull about three gallons of water out of the air every day. On the plus side, nighttime in Manta was magic; there was usually a nice breeze off the Pacific, and the temperatures would drop to around 70 F. This made me feel trapped inside, and I only went out when I had to go somewhere, or when I wanted to jump in the pool. Climate experts are predicting that these phenomena are going to result in soaring coastal temperatures, plus heavy rains and flooding along the coast, and up to about 1, meters in elevation. At the same time, the Sierra region is expected to experience serious drought conditions, which appear to be already upon us. And while Cuenca can get chilly at times, I can cope with that type of climate much more easily. They do get together occasionally to dine in large groups, or go to English-language movies together. Some hang out on the beach a lot, and some sit on their terraces, watching for whales to jump up out of the ocean. A lot of them play golf in Montecristi. In Cuenca, we have all manner of expat activities we can participate in. Music, art, theater, language classes, pool tournaments, cribbage club, trivia contests, karaoke, and so much more. We would all die exhausted and broke if we tried to participate in every expat-oriented event that Cuenca has to offer. Manta, however, offers almost none of that. I practiced with them a bit and was planning to do a show with him and his band, One Race, but by the time that that was all coming together, I was sinking deeply into a pit of depression, with deep feelings of isolation and loss caused by my grieving and longing for my former life in Cuenca. So there may be more to the expat culture there than I was able to uncover, but I never found it. It seemed like most expats in Manta stick to themselves, or hang out with the same folks regularly. Dust in the Wind! Partly because of all the sand in the soil, and partly because it was so dry, we had a constant battle with thick, gritty dust that would accumulate on everything we owned. If we wanted to keep the apartment clean, that meant significant dusting every single day, and that gets old after a while. You sorta get used to it after a while, but never completely. Then, right after moving there, I got another one — the same speed in the same zone! Crickets loved my kitchen. They especially loved going behind heavy appliances and chirping all night long. But the real nemesis or so it seemed were the hundreds of red, nearly microscopic ants. They appeared on the kitchen counter every time we tried to cook or make a cup of tea. We tried sprays and other deterrents, but they refused to be deterred. Eventually, we just sort of let them do their thing. Then there were the mosquitos. My wife and girls hated them because they were constantly being bit. Mosquitos hate me. They avoid me. In all my time in Manta, I can only remember one time when I was bit. Just once! You only get that from mosquitos, so I must have gotten really lucky the night that one skeeter bit me! But there are three other strains, and one of them is often deadly. That made the apartment more of an oven than it already was. On the bright side, it was also the final straw that triggered our decision to move back to Cuenca. Then, as soon as they took my temperature, they immediately sent me to a special area to receive fluids — a lot of fluids! But they also came to the area where I was getting fluids and took blood. Then someone came with a wheelchair to take me for an x-ray. In Cuenca, I would have had to find my way to the lab, then to x-ray, and then back again, waiting for the results to take them back to the ER doctor. But they took good care of me in Manta, and I consider that a huge plus. So if you plan on moving to or visiting Manta, plan on using a lot of mosquito repellant! I even had to stop using it to brush my teeth because my toothbrush started to smell and taste vaguely like cow manure. I found some older colonial-style buildings, but most were in very bad shape and appeared to be too run-down to use for anything. Then there was the landscape, which was dry, parched, littered with trash, and just smelled bad. The trees are not sculptured like they are in Cuenca. The streets are not swept like they are in Cuenca. How can you not love this city? Simply put, I needed more than Manta had to offer me. Ironically, after about three weeks there, I acclimated to the elevation, and most of my symptoms returned with a vengeance. And as I mentioned earlier, I was getting more and more depressed and having feelings of deep isolation. Plus, anyone who knows me, knows that I need to stay busy. I need a project to be working on, or I need to be playing music with other like-minded folks. So after three months in Manta, I finally realized that everyone and everything that made me love Ecuador was back in Cuenca, so moving back home suddenly became our top priority — especially after the dengue! The only thing I miss about Manta is being able to wear shorts and flip-flops all the time. Oh, and the calamari and langostino! And the warmer toilet seats. And the fabulous sunsets. But we have great sunsets in Cuenca, too. You may not have known much about Manta, and you may be considering a move there yourself, perhaps to escape the cool climate of the Andes, or maybe for health reasons. Manta has a lot going for it, and many expats love living there. You must be logged in to post a comment. Ok, so it looks like buying from Amazon in Ecuador just got a whole lot easier and cheaper! Usually, I try to offer some concrete advice or a clear path. Why did we move five times in five years? Was it by choice or necessity? Well, let me take you on a journey through our. Are you a U. Jeff Schinsky. Contents show. Jeff Schinsky has lived in Cuenca since early and has learned a lot about life here. He is especially knowledgeable about the process of renting a home in Cuenca, and he enjoys sharing that information with others to help them in this all-important process. Jeff is married and has three lovely stepdaughters. He is also a member of the popular local band, Northern Roots , where he sings, plays percussion, and works really hard at playing the harmonica. In his spare time, Jeff is learning the guitar and enjoys wandering the country and taking photos to share with friends. Leave a Reply Cancel reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Join Us on Social Media. Facebook-f Group Youtube. Rough Landing in Ecuador? July 8, Email Address. Military Veterans Read More. You may also like. Related Posts. Health Insurance Options for U. Military Veterans Are you a U. Subscribe To Our Weekly Newsletter. And go into the draw to win a YapaTree Card. New winner every month. Change Location Find awesome listings near you! Change Location.

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