Before You Set Off to See the World...

My junior high Spanish teacher seemed fascinated with making sure her young charges knew three things by the end of seventh grade: How to introduce yourself, how to ask where the bathroom is, and how to conjugate verbs. There was one vital life skill that should have been included in that list; how to order food.

It seems like a fairly straightforward operation. You find the McDonald's in the foreign city of your choice and you say, "Big Mac and a Coke." You lay down your money, pick up your food, and off you go. Not so fast. I've traveled all over South America, in Europe, and Asia, and found ordering food to be a challenge, no matter how good I am (or think I am) at the language.

In Paraguay I was asked (in Spanish) if I wanted a hamburguesa completas. Even a dolt can figure that one out. Sure I want a complete hamburger. Incomplete hamburgers might be missing a bun or the mustard or who knows what. What I got was a hamburger with a fried egg on it. At the American Pizza (which looked like a Pizza Hut, but the resemblance stopped there), I saw an American Pizza on the menu. It was their specialty. I ordered it, only to find it was a pizza covered in boiled egg, tomatoes, peas, and carrots. The peas and carrots were the kind you find in a can labled Del Monte. Yum.

The problem with ordering food in a foreign language isn't just placing your order. It's the ten thousand questions that inevitably follow in rapid-fire succession. Do you want that with fries? Can I supersize your drink? Was that with mayo or mustard? Did you want radishes on that? And even in foreign lands where English is common, it's not much better. In Vancouver I asked for a pizza with Canadian bacon on it. You'd think that would be a slam dunk. Nope. The waitress stared at me. "You want bacon on your pizza? Seriously?"

"Canadian bacon."

"You're in Canada. If you get it here, it's pretty much gotta be Canadian bacon. So you want a bacon pizza?"

"Canadian bacon."

"We've already been down this street. What else you want on it?"

"Pineapple."

"Bacon and pineapple?"

At this point my wife intervened and asked if they had ham. "Sure, and that would taste a lot better than bacon if you're putting it with pineapple."

In Tokyo I walked into a Denny's. "Grand Slam, please."

The waitress, who clearly had taken lessons from the gal in Vancouver, said, "Gran Slam? Gran Slam baseball?"

"Yep. With two eggs and bacon. Grand Slam."

The waitress went over and got the manager. He approached tenatively. "Grand Slam?"

"Yessir. Grand Slam."

He began using sign language, his English being only marginally better than my Japanese. I was pretty sure he was taking me to the acrylic food display found in the windows of all Japanese restaurants so I could point to which Grand Slam I wanted. Instead, he leads me outside, bows deeply, and says, "Most sorry, but we not play baseball here. This restaurant. Baseball in Tokyo Dome. That way."

Undeterred, I pointed at the correct choice in the window and said, "That. That's a Grand Slam."

"Oooooh! You call that Gran Slam?"

"In America, that's what we call it. Grand Slam."

"Ooooooh. In Japan, we call that pancakes."

The local burger place wasn't any better. They have combo meals in Japan, but they are called sets. So I ordered, "One set."

"One? Set?"

"One set."

"Set?"

"One set."

Two hamburgers, one drink, and something faintly resembling fries were laid on a tray. I removed the second hamburger and said, "One set. Not two set."

The manager was again brought over and I repeated, "One set. Not two set."

He said, "Set set or one set?"

Turns out, in Japanese, you don't order one set. You order set. If you want two, then you say two set. But one set is just set. Who knew? An hour and a half later, after the district manager and the American embassy had all been summoned to sort the mess out, I was seated and eating the two hamburgers, one drink, and order of pseudo-fries we started with.

My advice on ordering food in foreign lands? Take cheese and crackers in your suitcase. You're gonna need them.

You're Moving Where...? What's a Cuenca?

When my mother-in-law informed us she was moving to Cuenca, Ecuador, my wife said something along the lines of, "Okay, Bear, you're the former geography teacher. Where in the world is that?" Where, indeed. As we began to explore this bold proposition, we quickly fell love with the idea, if not the reality, of a place reportedly similar to the United States two or three generations ago, but with high speed internet.



Postcard shot of the central part of downtown Cuenca.
The blue skies are a bit of a rarity (not much different than Portland, Oregon). On sunny days,
everyone comes out of doors to enjoy the sunshine.

The first thing we had to figure out was how to pronounce the place: Quanka with the first a being long will work. Kwaanka might also help. The second was to figure out where it was and why it was, according to many authorities, the place for North Americans to retire. The third thing was to figure out why American retirees, spoiled by HD TV and all the infrastructure a well-oiled society can provide, would trade any of that in to live in a developing country. 

If you are familiar with the positioning of Estes Park in Colorado, you will have a very workable picture of where and how Cuenca sits in the Andes Mountains. Like Estes Park, it sits in a valley surrounded by mountains along the Continental Divide. Highly developed ancient civilizations called the place home long before the United States was ever considered.

Unlike the quaint Estes Park, Cuenca has a population of somewhere around 340,000 people. The central part of the city, which sits on a plateau overlooking the newer sections of town, had been a center for politics, religion, economics, and culture for hundreds of years when it was captured by the Spanish in 1557.

Many women still wash clothes in the river. The upper and middle classes tend to do it the old fashioned way: a washing machine.

Ecuador is on the western side of South America, below Colombia and above Peru. Not surprisingly, the predominant language is Spanish. Very surprisingly, the legal tender of the nation is the American dollar. The president of the country was educated in the United States and has the prerequisit disdain for us that you would expect from all Latin American leaders. His political running buddies come from Venezuela and Iran, which doesn't make him many friends in the U.S. government.

The word Ecudaor means equator, but that fact has fooled many people. If you assume "equator" equals hot and you plan to spend much time in Cuenca (or Quito, the capital), you are in for a rude suprise. It rains a lot in Cuenca and reports that high temperatures hit the 70s (Farenheit) each day are misleading. It may peak out in the 70s, but most of the time it is cloudy and extremely cool. Think San Francisco.

So why do so many Americans move to Cuenca? While individual motives vary, the two things I heard over and over were low cost of living and lack of government intervention in daily life. The first is true, if you choose to use the local markets and live the lifestyle of the average working class Ecuadorian. (Most people who can afford to move to South America want more than that.) Regarding the lack of government intrusion in daily life, that's probably true, unless you're a member of the media.

Journalists in Ecuador are on the government's naughty list. Most newspapers that really reported the news have been legislated or sued out of business by the government. Reporters are regularly jailed for reporting things the government would just as soon you not know.

And the lack of government imposition in the lives of the Average American or Candian retiree comes at a price. All those taxes and fees and surcharges you pay in the United States and Canada underwrite the infrastructure we have come to take for granted. Take away the taxes and you take away many of the items those taxes went to provide. The roads in Ecuador can be interesting. When a truck turns over and blocks a highway, it's generally up to the citizenry to figure out how to right the situation. If you need an ambulance, you are advised to take a taxi to the hospital. (The wait for an ambulance might be measured with a calendar instead of a clock.) Most houses are made of cinderblock or stone. That's a good thing. You don't want to rely on the fire department to save you. And schools? Those are for the ones who can afford it. Love it or hate it, that's how it is.

If it sounds like I'm down on Cuenca or Ecuador, nothing could be farther from the truth. But if you are going to change hemispheres, you need to know what you're getting into. And that is the purpose of this blog. To start the conversation on Ecuador in general and Cuenca in particular. Feel free to respond, to disagree (agreeably), ask questions, and throw in your two cents worth.

When you first arrive in Cuenca, you will probably locate in a hotel in the central part of the city. We stayed at La Posada del Angel. Lovely, but no box springs. You left those when you left the U.S. of A. It will remind you of the beds you slept on at summer camp.

Oh, and there is one other motive...I loved Ecuador so much, and it spoke to me so loudly, that it produced a novel, my first work of fiction. It's a mystery/suspense novel entitled The Ecudorian Deception. It is available from amazon.com in Kindle and softback editions.

If you live in Ecuador, are thinking about Ecuador, have ever heard of Ecuador, want to learn more about Ecuador, or never heard of Ecuador but enjoy a good bit of whodunnit, I believe you will love this book. And this blog takes you behind the scenes of the fictional novel into the real places and people that inspired it.

Enjoy.