A First Look at Cuenca

We arrived two days ago in Cuenca, a medium-sized colonial city in the mountains in the south of Ecuador.  The flight from Quito was cheap enough ($65) and short enough (50 minutes), but not for the faint of heart – straight up for fifteen minutes, followed by a brief and relatively calm beverage service, then capped off with twenty minutes of rapid and turbulent descent.  I did get a chance to catch some of the beautiful landscape around here on the way down, wave after wave of steep hills and narrow valleys, with small clay-colored towns interspersed.

Cuenca is the largest of these towns, and fully occupies a small valley ringed by big hills or small mountains, depending on your perspective.  Right now, I’m sitting on the patio of the house where we are staying, looking down at the colonial center of the city and the plaza and cathedral at its heart.  We are in a newer area (mid 20^th Century?) just outside the colonial street grid, partway up the slope of one of the hills that forms the northern border of the valley.  We’re probably about 200’ above the center and a mile away.  The view from here is really stunning.  Visually, this area reminds me of parts of Italy – the architecture, the roads, the way the streets are laid out, even some of the trees.

View from our house

We are set up in a “homestay” arranged by our Spanish school, at the home of a warm and outgoing matriarch whose five children have all left the nest (which only happens upon marriage in Ecuador).  Most of them live nearby, along with her eight grandchildren.  On Sunday, when we arrived, there was a lot of activity as many of them were visiting for lunch and dinner.  An interesting and very friendly bunch, the children and their spouses (all around my age) are professionals who have lived and traveled abroad and were more than patient with our Spanish.  Weekdays seem a bit quieter, with several grandchildren coming by each day after school and staying through the afternoon.  The grandchildren are as friendly as their parents.  Today, we took two of them to a nearby park (maybe they took us?) to play Frisbee and run around with O&R.  As we had hoped, the playground activities helped our kids overcome some initial shyness caused by the language barrier.

I have some experience with this whole homestay thing.  I had a similar arrangement in Antigua, Guatemala back in 1995 when I studied Spanish there for a few weeks.  It’s a great way to meet people and really get a sense of local life and culture; and of course, it’s great for our Spanish.  But Yo and I wonder if we’re getting a bit too fancy in our middle-age; we find ourselves craving a bit more personal space and a queen sized bed.  So we’re thinking about moving into a rental apartment (actually, an amazing colonial era house complete with its signature Cuencan courtyard) in the center of town next week.  But then, the view’s great from here, and there’s the built-in play dates with the kids’ new local friends . . .