Sketches of Cuenca #2 - Glen Birbeck - Craig and Lucy of the Wind Horse Cafe

Lucy is from Ohio, Craig from Minnesota. They married in 1974 and after graduating from college bought land in Wisconsin and started farming. They tried different crops but after a while turned their simple homestead into a dairy farm. That activity lasted twenty three years. At that point they sold the older part of the herd and moved to Nicaragua.
















In Nicaragua they worked on a co-op dairy farm for a year. Lucy found she loved Spanish and after returning to the States she studied to be a teacher of Spanish. Having regular jobs plus the cows to take care of proved to be too much. A stint in the Peace Corps in Ecuador followed.

Eventually they found themselves in Cuenca with a building at the corner of Hermano Miguel and Calle Larga. They turned this into the Wind Horse Cafe. As followers of the Shambala tradition of Buddhism, Craig and Lucy offer space for meditation upstairs and a welcome to all. Providing a place for travelers to pause and refresh is an ancient Buddhist tradition.

The Wind Horse opens its doors five days a week to a variety of travelers. Expats from North America, European back packers, Cuencanos, all find a welcome and food that is reassuring in its familiarity or slightly exotic. Each visitor has a unique story and reason for being in Cuenca. Operating a restaurant is a lot
of effort anywhere. The paperwork, taxes and local requirements are a challenge, but Craig says they deal with it. Craig believes the work is made easier by the sense of community.

The couple return to the states annually on average .  "We're not getting rich", Craig says, "but we are making a living". In their off time they travel in Azuay province or relax in their beautiful house in the country at the edge of town. They've had the cafe for about 18 months and figure to hold this tack five years before altering
course again.

Their random acts of kindness, hard work and sincere hospitality will make them conspicuous where ever they land in the future.


-Glen Birbeck www.glensketch.me

About Glen Birbeck: 

Glen Birbeck found his southern home in Cuenca three years ago. Since then he has developed his Spanish and been  active in the Cuenca Writers Group.  Painting and drawing are pastimes.  He also enjoys building electronic gadgets and (kinetic) art.

Researching Living in Ecuador Online? Here are some NON BIASED tips.

Packing up your bags and moving to another country, for whatever reason, can be a daunting task.  Many people spend numerous hours of their days towards making this decision, but is the research even accurate?

What is the crime rate of Ecuador?
Are their any Jobs in Ecuador?
What is the best place to live in Ecuador?
Can I drive there?
Do I need to learn Spanish?

Thousands of questions pump through your cerebrum, ricocheting throughout the depths of your mind as your fear and anxiety start to overwhelm you into possibly backing out, or making a decision without doing your due diligence. 

I am going to give you a few non biased tips on doing your online research so you can come to your own decision on whether Ecuador (or any other country if you happen to be researching elsewhere) is right for you.

Tips to researching Ecuador as your living or retirement destination:

1.  You can not just simply Google ¨Living in Ecuador¨ or ¨Retiring in Ecuador¨ and clicking the first page you see.

Companies pay heavily for you to click on their site after searching those keywords.  Although these companies are doing exactly what they are supposed to do (promote the country they are selling in a positive manner), you must realize they will most likely paint Ecuador to look like a masterpiece from the distance of behind your desktop, only for your to arrive, take a Real Estate Tour that you already paid for, and realize in your eyes it is more of a monet.  Please note I am not saying to avoid reading the information these companies put out.  I am merely suggestion to broaden your search more.

Instead of relying solely on organizations marketing Ecuador to help furnish your final opinion, try to find some blogs, facebook forums, and places such as the ExpatExchange.com or Expat-blog.com to connect with expats in Ecuador directly to get their personal feedback.  Be aware some of them may offer you more than just free advice, but also understand there are plenty of Expats here who have offerings that will genuinely help you.

2. When using Google to search for keywords related to Ecuador, format your search for the most recent results, or results written in the past year.  That way you do not get OUT OF DATE information which may hinder your research efforts.  Here is a screen shot I made showing you how to fine tune your Google search in Firefox.

3.  This one should be obvious, but I have to state it anyways because I have seen it happen many times.  TUNE OUT THE TROLLS.

Anyone who constantly posts negative content in the forums about Ecuador yet happens to live here for years, or anyone who thinks they know everything about Ecuador, but have never put their boots on Ecuadorian soil, are not good sources for research.  Someone who can not put together a cohesive sentence on the internet is also probably not a good source of information, and more likely someone who has forgotten to take their meds. 

Instead, if you are chatting in social networking communities find reputable people who are vouched for and give facts, or at least solid and well educated opinions about their life here.  If you want to know who some of these people are feel free to send me a request in my contact form which goes straight to my email.

4.   Include a 3 to 4 week trip (or as long as you possibly can) into your research efforts.

Book the flight and put your boots on the ground, using all the contacts you have established that you have confidence in to help you along your way.  Really get a feel for the country and how your life would be.  Go to the malls, grocery stores, mercados, a church, or whatever places you would normally need to go.  Don´t dedicate your whole trip here to touristic adventures because your real life here will not be all about chasing butterflies in Mindo or walking La Ronda in Centro Historico Quito.  You most likely will not be going on jungle Safari´s either so make sure you take time to research regular life activities. 

You will need to shop, eat, pay bills, and do regular routine tasks you had to do in your former life.  These routine tasks may be performed substantially different than what you are accustomed to in your home country so you must be aware of these changes, and determine whether you can adapt or not.


If I think of any more tips I will update this post, but I hope this gets you started on researching whether Ecuador is right for you.

Mike
www.themiddleoftheworld.com
  

Getting my Cedula.

Hello everyone.  It has been quite a while since I have posted.  Only because I have been extremely busy piecing together my new life here.  I finally got my Ecuadorian "Cedula" which is great, considering how complicated it can be to go through that process.  I was ready with my perfect "carpeta" with all my apostilled and translated documents they needed to properly process my Ecuadorian ID card.  Well, it turns out when I got my Visa, one of the required papers for my Cedula had my last name as "Bruner Ii" instead of "Bruner II", which made the whole process a nightmare.  The Registro Civil wouldn't take my paperwork and they made me go back to the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores to have my name corrected.

When I got to the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores they told me it was impossible to change it, then printed out an email they wrote internally stating this.  I had to go back to the Registro Civil with this paper, which proved to be helpful... for now.

So I keep shuffling through the endless lines getting passed back and forth to different cubicles and windows until finally I land in the area where they are supposed to take my photo for my ID card.  When I sit down with my approved paperwork, the lady decides to review the papers one more time.  Just my luck.  When she looks at my paperwork she notices that they put my middle name where my last name was supposed to be on the paperwork.  Not a big deal right?  OH YES.  Big deal here in Ecuador.  Every paper has to be perfect.  She told me she could not process my Cedula until this was fixed.  My face and eyes turned into an inferno and I nearly turned into the Human Torch hearing this.  I was close to exploding.  I looked at her computer screen and said, "Can't you just type it into your computer correctly?", in Spanish.  She responded "That is impossible" and rudely told me to go.  She must have really been proud of her position of authority.  I saw clearly on her computer screen she could type whatever name she wanted.  I realized it was pointless to fight so I went home in defeat, then went back the next day to the Registro Civil to fix the same stupid piece of paper again.

Turning Point:

When I arrived at the Registro Civil the next day, I had an epiphany.  When they made my original document they could not make my name "Bruner II" because their system was set up to automatically capitalize the first letter of each name and make every letter afterwards lower cased.  As a result, my name became "Bruner Ii".  With this discovery, I decided not only will I get my Cedula TODAY, but I will also teach the girl behind the counter a little trick so the next "II" that tries to enter this country won't have to go through the hell I went through.

It is simple actually.  In most fonts a capital I looks exactly like a lower case L, so my solution was to make my "II" by having the clerk on the other side type "Il".  It took a lot of convincing and humbling to the kind girl on the other side but she finally tried it and it worked like a charm.  She cracked a thankful smile and I was happy to make her day as she did mine.  She also corrected the other error on the document and returned it to me to submit again.

I returned to the Registro Civil with renewed vigor and energy, along with positive thoughts, which paid off dearly.  Not only was the document corrected right, but in the same morning the Registro Civil decided they no longer needed 1,000,000 pieces of paper to hand out a Cedula.  They were going "Paperless".  My paperwork (what was left of it) was finally approved and my photo was taken.  I was able to pick up my Cedula 3 days later.  It was a hard fought battle but I remain VICTORIOUS.  I would never wish my experience upon anyone, but I have also heard of worse experiences.  The moral of the story is, if you can afford it, get a facilitator to handle these type of matters on your behalf.

Wish me luck... My driver's license is next. 

The new Airport in Quito -Quiport

My father in law and I decided to take a trip to the new airport today just to see what it was all about.  I have heard a lot of rumors that the roads were horrible and that it would be a nightmare to get from the city to the airport so we decided to find out the truth.

We left the house in Mariscal at about 10:15 and found there was not much traffic leaving the city.  I do believe this is partially due to the fact that it is a Saturday so we didn't have to worry about the rush hour traffic we normally encounter. 

We were out of the city and through the tunnel Guayasamin in about 15 minutes which is amazing in itself.  We travelled through the normal weekend traffic you run into through Cumbaya and Tumbaco.  There was a slight bottle neck (5 minutes or so) over the bridge that crosses the river.  I can't remember the name of the river or the bridge but it is one lane each way so a bottleneck is understandable.  From my understanding they will be building a wider bridge soon.  Once we crossed the river it seemed like the roads were all brand new!



From here on out the HORRENDOUS traffic looked something like this all the way to the airport. 

 
As you can see the massive gridlock was very tough to navigate.  There was constant honking of horns and there must have been 12,000 cars trying to fight their way to the airport on this "unfinished" road.  If you can't sense the sarcasm in my keystrokes then I don't know what to tell you.

The road was smoother than a baby's bottom and traffic was NO WHERE in site.  Once again I will state this is a Saturday so normal rush hour does not apply, but I can't help to think of how horrible the traffic was in LA during the daytime on the weekend to get to LAX. 

It looks to me like the roads were freshly paved and ready to be heavily traveled by tourists and business people alike.  I will state for the 3rd time however, this was a Saturday morning.  We arrived at the the airport right around 11:00 give or take a few minutes.

Once we got there we decided to camp out with all the other curious bystanders and watch the planes land and take off at the new airport.  The boy got a kick out of that along with my father in law.

Looks like all is well at the new airport.  See you all soon!

Mike
www.themiddleoftheworld.com