THE DARK SIDE OF CUENCA ECUADOR 🫤

We've talked a lot in our videos about why we think Cuenca is great, but a few of you out there have said that we only share the good things. Yeah. Even though we have over two dozen videos that talk about the pros, cons and dark side of Ecuador and different cities in Ecuador. And I even created a playlist to make all those videos easy to find for you guys. We know that no place is perfect. So in this video, we are going to talk about the dark side of Cuenca. Before we dive into the 10 things that we like least about Cuenca, Ecuador, we wanted to remind you that we send out a newsletter every Friday with expat relevant news. And we often talk about bad stuff in that newsletter more so than we do in our videos even. So I'll put a link below. You can go check that out. Yeah. And you can opt out anytime and it is totally free. Yeah. And you get to download our cost of living and moving calculator. Plus you'll get access to all of our past newsletters right after you sign up and you'll get a discount off our e-course if you're interested in that. All right, let's jump into JP. Number 10 is the weather. This is my least favorite thing about Cuenca because it is often cold and cloudy. I was cold a lot when we lived there and I did not like that. Yeah, we were cold on our last visit too. We spent a week there right in kind of right by Parque de la Madre and it was pretty chilly at night, man. We were snuggling and covered up. We had multiple layers of blankets on just to stay warm at night. And during the day it was kind of cloudy and very windy. And man, that can be pretty bitter cold when it's kind of a damp wind that is around like 55, 60 degrees. It feels a lot like Seattle. Cuenca has also had a lot of rain and even flooding in parts around town and the outskirts and landslides in Cajas, which was a problem because it makes it really hard to drive through there if the road is closed. Yeah. It takes a lot longer to get to Guayaquil by road if that road is closed through Cajas. You have to go north through Kenyar. There's also, there's four rivers that run through Cuenca and they can get really inundated with water. In fact, where the Yanumcay meets with the Tomebamba river in Parque Paraiso, they had some massive flooding there. It completely changed the course of the river and washed out that whole peninsula down there. It looks completely different than it did when we lived there. It's like mostly river now. Number nine is the elevation. Yeah, this is really my issue, not Amelia's so much. When we lived there, I never adjusted to the elevation. It's at 8,400 feet and it's really high and the air is very thin. And I really struggled while we were there. Although after we moved to the coast, I lost some more weight. We stopped drinking. So now we only drink socially on special occasions. And I think that the not drinking, the weight loss, also years of eating the healthy Ecuadorian fruits and vegetables, I think maybe have cleared out some of the gunk built up and I'm not having a problem anymore. And a couple of days, if I do have an issue like lightheadedness, then I drink a cup of mate de coca, which we always have handy and that clears it right up and I'm good to go. Another big issue with that high elevation means high UV rays. Unconventionals, I did not realize until we moved to Cuenca that the UV index actually goes above 10 and often you will see it at 11, which is like the danger zone. So I'm going to tell you all again, you need to wear sunscreen. I wear a sunscreen and a hat. And then sometimes I even bring my umbrella, which is great because there'll be times when you have super high UV because the sun is out and it's full sun. And then like 30 minutes later it could be raining. So the umbrella works for the sun and for the rain. You really need to protect yourself. Yeah. And I always wear a hat because I don't want to not only sunburn the dome, but I also don't want to blind the Ecuadorians. So I always, always have a hat, but I even put sunscreen on my head in case the hat blows off or I lose it because I don't, I just do not want to get this. This has never been sunburned and I hope to keep it that way. Yeah. You definitely want to take that seriously. We've heard from a lot of people lately that they did not heed those warnings and they were unpleasantly surprised with sunburn. So the risk of the high UVs, the 11 plus is real. All right. Number eight is pollution. Cuenca sits in a big giant bowl in the mountains and there are buses and diesel trucks and delivery trucks and motorcycles. And sometimes if there isn't wind, that pollution can kind of sit there. And also if you're going down a narrow street in one of those old buses, what I used to call the blue puffer buses, they'd go by or one of those diesel engines or a trash truck. It can be really bad, the pollution on those streets. It has gotten better recently. They replaced a lot of those blue buses with energy efficient diesel engines. So it's not as bad, but it's still not great. Yeah. It's not as nasty as when we first moved there. We used to call it walking the gauntlet along Dose de Abril because there'd be bus after bus after bus. And man, you paid your dues with breathing in that heavy air. So it's gotten better. But like JP said, there is occasion when you're going to deal with pollution. And sometimes there's ash from the volcano, too, which is something I did not even know was a problem until we moved to Ecuador. Yeah, we actually didn't experience that while we lived there. But soon after we moved to Olón, they had that Sangue volcano, which is northeast of Cuenca erupted. And there was ash in Cuenca and we saw pictures and it was crazy, crazy. Number seven is the noise. As JP mentioned, there are a lot of vehicles on the road, a lot of buses and cars, also a lot of motorcycles. And they can be very loud. Yeah, the delivery guys use what we would call dirt bikes like for motocross. Their engines are ridiculously loud and they'll go by like once every 10 or 15 minutes if you're staying on a busy street because they're making deliveries. You can look out and hear them going and just as fast as they can go and as loud as their engine will go. It is so loud it just rattles the windows. Yeah. And when we stayed over in Parque de la Madre, we've talked about this multiple times. We were woken up at 630 in the morning with blasting music because they were doing those Zumba classes. So that's something that will definitely impact your peace and tranquility if you want to sleep in. And then they also do those at night, too. And they do that around the town. So it's not just in Parque de la Madre. And it's not just loud music in the parks with the Zumba either. A lot of people play, they have this big giant speakers, you know, huge on stands and they just blast them out of their houses or on street corners. A lot of the businesses have those. And Ecuadorians love karaoke and they're not great at singing it. They love their 80s music karaoke. We have some neighbors where we live now that we're up till two or three in the morning. They were either singing karaoke or playing rock band or something. But it was horrible. We could not sleep all night because they were having a party and singing all night long. And I mean, it would have been one thing if it was good and maybe we could have gone to sleep, but it was not good. It was horrible. Yeah. If you're going to blast your karaoke or singing or whatever at 2 a.m., please make it good. Yeah. And also there's a lot of dogs, barking dogs and roosters. We have a friend who just moved to Cuenca and she told us that she has a rooster that lives next door that does not know how to tell time. It goes off all night long. And then the dogs start barking when the rooster starts. So she's having a bit of a cultural adjustment, a Cuenca adjustment period here that she gets used to the noise. She's going to have to get a sound machine or a headset or something. You do get used to the noise after a while, but I agree with JP, get a white noise machine. It does help a lot. Yeah, that really drowned out the flock of roosters we had behind our house in Cuenca because without the sound machine, it was really loud. And they started about three thirty or four in the morning. Well, I remember we also had they did that pop up nightclub every once in a while. And that would be blasting. I don't know. God, it was so loud. Yeah. Yeah. Sunday mornings, it was a church. And then every like every other Thursday, it was a pop up nightclub and it would just thump, thump. We would be laying in bed and you could hear you could feel the thumping in our bed. It's crazy. It was crazy. All right. What's number six, Amelia? Number six is more crime. This is a bummer, but we definitely have seen an increase of crime, especially because of the pandemic. Yeah, the pandemic has caused a lot of economic hardship in Ecuador as it has throughout the world. And, you know, people are desperate. They need to feed their families. And some people have resorted to robbery and theft and a lot more pickpocketing. There is also a prison that is located outside of Cuenca in the neighborhood of Turi. And there has been some protests around that area lately because the locals don't want hardened criminals in their backyard, basically. And I can't say I blame them for that. Yeah, I think they're concerned that the crime will follow with the prison. So it's a bit concerning. We actually walked by that prison before. It used to be really low occupancy, but now I guess it's kind of overflowing. So that's kind of causing a problem and a lot of concerned people in Cuenca. Number five is the panhandlers. And this is a problem all around the world. And we experienced it when we moved to Cuenca and nothing has really changed there. Yeah, we also experienced it when we were back in Texas. We were people out asking us for money. So it's not something that's unique to Ecuador by any means. But there are a lot of Venezuelan refugees in Ecuador. They fled here when their country kind of went downhill and their currency became worthless. And they came here because Ecuador is one of the wealthier countries. And this area, this region of the world. And so they come here and they ask people for money. And especially if you are a gringo. I mean, let's just be honest. They they see gringos coming and they'll run across the street to ask us for money. And a lot of times they have children with them, too. And we've we read in the newspaper that those children may not actually be theirs. They actually rent children to make them seem more, you know, I guess in need. It's not just Venezuelans that are out there asking for money. We have seen Ecuadorians. We've seen Europeans. We've seen gringos doing it. Yeah, this one guy used to ask us for money all the time when we lived at Elver Hill. And he was still there. He asked us for money again when we were there just a few weeks ago. There was a woman a couple of years ago that approached us. She said she was from Australia. She had an Australian accent, said she needed money so that she could go to the consulate because she lost her passport. And we gave her money and felt sorry for when we were there. Just recently, she came into a restaurant, no longer had an Australian accent, asking us for money because she said that she needed money for a bus to go to Guayaquil for something. And so basically what we're saying is that panhandling is an issue in Cuenca and pretty much throughout the cities in Ecuador and the world. Number four on our list is the population. We notice that there are a lot more people in Cuenca than when we left. There were a lot of people there when we lived there, too, but it just seems a lot more crowded now. And some of that may be tourism, because tourism industry has really picked up. And so people are coming from all over the world, as they did before. It kind of died down after the last part of the pandemic and there weren't as many tourists, but there are now a lot. Yeah, which is a good thing. We're really happy about that. But we know that there are more people moving to Cuenca, so I guess that could be a pro or a con because it's nice when you have a bigger population, you have possibly an increase of services, but then you can also have an increase in crime. And also housing costs could go up, although we're not really seeing that right now. So we'll keep an eye on that for you guys. With the higher population, though, comes more traffic. And we notice a definite increase in traffic recently compared to when we lived there. It was bad when we lived there, especially during rush hour. But now it's like it can take you 30 or 45 minutes to to go in a cab from like one part of town to another, when normally it would take 10 minutes. Yeah, that is number three on our list is the heavy traffic. And it is extra bad if it is raining or if there's some sort of event going on. So you definitely need to plan ahead for that. If it's raining, you can find it very difficult to get a taxi. And that has been the case ever since we lived in Cuenca. That's nothing new. Yeah. And if there's a soccer game, if Ecuador is playing soccer, you are not going to find a cab anywhere in the city. It just you cannot find one. They aren't even on Azu Taxi. So you're not going to be able to call for a cab. They are watching football. They're watching their national team play. So keep that in mind for the World Cup. They they're playing the first one of the first games of the World Cup in November. I think it's in November. And when that game is on, there will not be a taxi on the road. So plan ahead. Go to your destination early or just stay home. Number two is that Cuenca can be isolated during a power or strike. Yeah, there's only three main roads that go in and out of Cuenca. So it's really easy to just put things in those roads and block those roads and prevent any sort of land traffic in and out of the city, which is what happened during the last power. It prevented propane delivery and fuel for gas, you know, gas for cars. So they were pretty much out of propane and fuel by the end of the 18 day power. And restaurants had closed because they had no propane to cook. A lot of the stores had empty shelves because they couldn't do food deliveries. The good thing is that Cuenca's airport is right in town. So during the power, they were able to fly in supplies. Yeah, that helped out a lot. But that does remind me. We forgot to mention under the noise section that Cuenca is right below the flight path for the airport. So planes come in several times a day or take off. And it can be really loud as they're flying right over kind of the flight path is right over Parque de la Madre. So it's pretty much the center of town. But fortunately, it isn't all day, every day. There's not a ton of flights because it is still a small airport, even though it is called international. Yeah, it's not international. A lot of people say, why can't I fly direct to Cuenca from Miami? Well, it says it's an international airport, but there are no international flights. So that's why. And number one on our list is that it's easy to live in an expat bubble. And this could be a pro or a con, depending upon your perspective. We think this is a con. Yeah, it's really easy to recreate your American lifestyle or your Canadian lifestyle in Ecuador just by living in the expat bubble. You don't have to integrate into the culture or learn the language. And we do not recommend that. We encourage people to come here, learn the language, make Ecuadorian friends, go to Ecuadorian activities and really try to become part of the culture and don't just live in that bubble. Oh, it's so much more rewarding if you put yourself out there. And sometimes it can be uncomfortable, especially when you're learning a new language. But the Ecuadorian people are so warm and welcoming and helpful. They will help you get through it. And then you'll find that they are going to want to practice their English with you while you're practicing your Spanish with them. So it is a great thing. And it's just great to come and experience this awesome country and the culture. And if you're just hiding because you're worried about putting yourself out there, I know sometimes it can feel really uncomfortable at first when you're learning to speak and you're feeling very self-conscious and insecure. You got to just power through. Yeah, the Ecuadorians might smile at you when you say something funny, but they're eager to help. And they're just really good natured people. So they are not going to get mad at you if you mess up. In fact, they really like it when you try to speak Spanish. They will actively encourage it and help you. If you want to see why we still love Cuenca and we think it's a great place to call home, then check out this video next. We are so thankful to be back home in Ecuador after a month in the United States. We know no place is perfect, but we still think the good far outweighs the bad here. If you found this video helpful, then leave us a like, please. And we will see you all in our next video. Ciao. Ciao.