Occasionally when traveling with a bit of time on one’s hands, one stumbles upon a place in which they identify so strongly that they find it difficult to leave . Cuenca in southern Ecuador was such a place for me. With a rich historical landscape suited for flanerie, a vibrant nightlife, small bohemian bars and cafes, and well-dressed indigenous Ecuadorians in beautiful top hats, it seemed like a good place to bed-down for a week or two.
I checked Into a large wooden hotel in the centre of town, left the muddy moto chained-up in the lobby, and proceeded to walk the cobblestone streets lined with wobbly adobe houses, imperious churches, grand 19th Century civic buildings, and handsome 21st Century Ecuadorians. However, interacting with the last of this list is difficult if one does not speak the local language; a great incentive to go to Spanish school!
Cuenca has an excellent reputation for Spanish language schools and many offer inexpensive one-on-one instruction; well-suited for those of us with intractable learning difficulties. And after 20 hours of one-on-one instruction from a dedicated and rather Catholic instructor, I finally cracked a great mystery of life, the Spanish verb. A Spanish verb can be conjugated in about 85 different ways depending on who is doing what to whom, in what tense, in what irregularity, and in what country. Lots of fun!
And after Spanish language school each day, I would lock myself in my windowless hotel room, practice los verbos and read Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment. And after 2 weeks of this I was happily ready to take Rodya’s Raskolnikov’s axe and conjugate the Cuencans.
After many clumsy sentences, cheap Pilsner, strong espresso and agitated long walks, I discovered that Cuenca is a very special place. It has a relaxed and sophisticated bohemian vibe, good haircuts (rare in Ecuador), a human intimacy, and a Keynesian heart (a collectivist ideological barrier against the worst bits of that Northern continent’s globalising trash!).
As I rode along the spine of the Andes away from Cuenca, a thick mist developed and it started to rain (heavily). My shoes filled with water and my hands began to freeze. I thought of Cuenca and immediately missed it, but there is always another town up ahead within the mountains and valleys of the Andes and within the high and lows of traveling.
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