Life in Cuenca Ecuador a Year Later

Time has gone by too fast and life in Cuenca Ecuador a year later is still changing and exciting.

Too, it has been a while since I have shared some pictures with you about our everyday life in Cuenca, Ecuador, so I am excited to share some today.

I got a little behind in wanting to share with you because both my mom and the Mr.’s mom have been sick. So we spent about 6 weeks in the states to look after them.

We got back to Cuenca now and I wanted to share what we have been doing and a little bit of this and that as we go about everyday life.

I just had to show you this picture the professional photographer took of Mr. Awesome 2015.

The kids looks so grown that it makes me happy on one hand and want to cry on the other.

If you have a kid that graduated homeschool or even if you are starting out, you can imagine how proud we are of this sweet kid.

Too, here in Cuenca, there are many Gringos and wonderful photographers.

The one we got wanted to take one more professional looking photo of him. So he told us if we had a suit and tie for Mr. Awesome 2015 that he could take a photo of him with the city as the backdrop.

We love this photo and love the background of a typical beautiful spring day here.

Another thing we have embraced is a different way of eating every day. This is called a tamale here.

Now being from Texas and Mexican-American, I am familiar with delicious chicken and pork tamales back home in Texas.

The tamales here are more hardy and the picture above is what they call tamales here in Cuenca.

It is corn, but the corn is more fine ground, almost more like cornbread and crumbly.

You have to have a fork to eat it whereas the tamales I am use to back in Texas, you can pick up with your fingers and eat if you want to.

This tamale has chicken, green chili, raisins (yes) and boiled egg slices baked on top.

It is cooked in the banana leaves and served wrapped up in them.

It is quite filling, tasty and we have embraced the differences in definition of food here.

Also, there is always something going on in centro or downtown.

We hit a craft market going on in downtown and the local police were entertaining us with music as we shopped because I have absolutely fallen in love with the local handicrafts.

That day I was looking to buy one of these miniature little scenes.

These little pieces of village life are quite common and what we see everyday here in Cuenca.

That is guinea pig (cuy) above on the grill and that is a delicacy here in Cuenca.

We bought a couple of the ones with cuy on them, but looking at the local handicrafts is always a favorite way to spend the rest of our day after school.

I just had to show what we climb a lot of days because I don’t think gringos quite get how much walking is done here.

We haven’t had a car for a year and don’t miss it.

Sure, some days we wouldn’t mind traveling, then again bus and cab are very reasonably priced.

Buses cost only .25 cents and taxi rides are not normally more than about $1.60 or so in the city, if that.

We travel like most locals, which is by walking and public transportation.

But I had to show you this picture as Mr. Senior 2013 goes up from river level to downtown.

With the high altitude too, it’s a workout for sure each time we do.

Then we have made plenty of gringo and Ecuadorean friends alike while here.

We had some friends come visit from the states and we ate in a favorite place when we have celebrations, which is El Mercado.

We had a good by dinner for Mr. Senior 2013 when he back to the states.

It’s quite common here to start off in one place to celebrate, like we did here and then move to  an upscale restaurant like El Mercado for dinner.

This was our last picture together here in Ecuador before Mr. Senior 2013 moved back to the states.

I made it sure it was dark, so you couldn’t see my teary eyes. Love that kid.

I have three more posts coming about what to pack when coming to Ecuador, one about the variety of fruit here and how Ecuadoreans eat them and about the beautiful Cajas mountains.

Hope you enjoyed this quick glimpse about what we do, which is eat, school and take in the beautiful spring weather each day. Love it.

Hugs and love ya,