Expats in Ecuador: 2 Year Update—Is the Honeymoon Over?

so we're going we're recording you want to talk about coffee first do you want to talk about coffee because that way we can drink all right Salud cheers [Applause] sorry for the slurping sound a little afternoon Cafe to get the party started it's been an adjustment here we've had to go through quite a few different brands of coffee to find something that we both like and both appreciate Cafe lohana in Cuenca man we miss you that scratched the itch but now we have a certain mix that we get of a local Don Victor roast with sugar and vilca roma 50 50. so we thought we'd come back and give you a little update it's been two years plus two years in two months three months we've been a little radio silent so we thought we'd check in and we've been busy we have to work we're not like on a solid vacation time like some people so we're jealous of you who belanos we wish we were you sometimes but we pretended we were you it was good yeah it was good while it lasted but anyway we want to come at you with our uh our thoughts and realizations after this amount of time here living in Ecuador as expats from North America and above all we really want to say how grateful we are to get to live here like All Things Considered this has been an amazing experience and I'm just super grateful to get to participate in it an Ecuador is a great country you know just like every place it's got its its challenges but for the most part it's a pretty easy place to live if you can you know put up with some stuff which we'll get into but we're not putting up with nearest as much as you are in the states sorry don't get it too Twisted so you may be wondering is the honeymoon over what not for me really yeah it's not over it's different you know the rose-colored glasses have been taken off and I you know it's more of it it's kind of like uh acceptance or surrendering to the reality of living here and what comes with that but still very very grateful like you said and very happy to have made the choice to move here for sure would not go back right yeah the thought of going back is um for me for sure I would say the honeymoon's over though I mean we've been here over two years like this is no longer like we said vacation this is real life and real life is always going to have challenges and issues and things to look at and uh doesn't mean I would change anything or you know it's just we're it's more a feeling of being settled can I add to that thank you absolutely I think it's different too because it feels like now we're actually making the life like we want to have or we want it to be whereas before the life that we had in the U.S was probably more out of necessity you know and it's not like it's a hundred percent one way or the other but there does seem to be like there's more more fluidity here to that experience because of you know it is it's more cost effective to live here so it does give you freedom to be able to try different things experiment with different things and um it's it gives you a little more grace I think that's what I get out of it at least absolutely so what would you say is the difference between like your expectation of this experience and the reality of it I definitely expected to have more hair at this point in my experience here I thought there would be some kind of magic living in Ecuador that would regrow my hair and unfortunately it's just traveled down to my back so other than that my biggest expectation was just to live a completely different life than what I was living in the U.S and to not die young because of heart attack that's a that's about the majority of it though that works great for me too because he came home one time in the states and he said if I keep doing this I'm going to die and I was like well we gotta do something else then because yeah that doesn't work into my Five-Year Plan uh for me I would say that the first year and a half or you know time in let me go back like I was calling it in for a lot of the time in the states like just feeling like I needed space to have a deeper bigger transformation and not feeling like that was accessible there and even the same thing in Cuenca like everything was just kind of congested and frenetic and don't get me wrong Cuenca is an amazing place it's just not like a deconditioning deep healing from your life kind of place so things really started to open up for me once we moved down here and we do have space and breathing room and quiet and I I mean I had the full body experience of gratitude for the first time in my life a few months ago where you're not like you know you're supposed to be grateful or you should be grateful but like this thank you Rose up from deep inside me and I was like oh that's what that's what people talk about when they talk about gratitude so that experience has been really cool I don't think I had you know necessarily expectation that it would be easy or that there wouldn't be challenges um so that I think we did a good job of manage managing those sorts of expectations so I guess my expectation to Define it a little better would be a health you know just to gain a better health because I didn't feel like I was in the best health because of stress in my lifestyle and work conditions I mean it was all good things by American Standards but it was not doing good things to my body and the lifestyle here I definitely feel healthier and happier the valley of longevity baby yeah [Music] you know I just never know it's going to come out of his mouth and I've learned that that's for you [Laughter] all right we'll get we'll get back on track Cuenca versus malakatos and kind we can kind of talk about bilka Bamba a little bit but we don't live there so we're still kind of outside yeah we're definitely Outsiders from real cabamba standards Cuenca is a great place to live especially if you like apartments and if you're okay with City City energy it's a great place to live it's a beautiful it's a beautiful city for Ecuador as far as we've seen and what I've known of Latin America with culture and arts and lots of things to do um vibrant expat community yeah once we land in Cuenca like you're as soon as you meet one expat you're gonna meet 50 others and you're gonna have this kind of instant community and that hasn't happened for us down here but at the same point we've been really insular we've been at home this is where we work we don't go out a lot um so we haven't made the kind of community here that we did there now Chad Linda if you're watching we love you guys and we're very grateful to have a couple friends for sure um in terms of housing like you definitely get a lot more for your money in Cuenca in an apartment in an apartment or even yeah or a house but apartments are where it's at in Cuenca like it seems like people really want top dollar for houses down here and like when they say they're furnished that like it doesn't include closets it doesn't include kitchen cabinets it's like those are all things you're kind of expected to bring to the table and we'll do that for five or six hundred but we're not going to do that for eight nine a thousand like for 800 bucks we're of the thought that everything you need should be included but we'll see because we're likely going to have to move at some point as we've heard the owner of the house is more motivated to sell so we're kind of that's on our radar right now for sure situation for me because I have very high standards for houses so that was one of my biggest concerns about us moving down here him coming from like the perfectionism of custom home building in Knoxville to coming down here where it's like it's good enough it fits it works just like it has a roof that's a bathroom a bed and you know a sink in a stove what more do you need yep so that managing expectations there it like specifically regarding housing has been a little trickier but you know knock on wood somehow things always work out and we'll find something um that works for us after here yeah something will work out is kind of an interesting it's an interesting community it seems like if you are you know if you're a young couple with kids that Community seems to be like super thriving and then there are a lot of much older people here there's not a lot of people here our age and it seems like if you're not working online and you're in your you know late 40s through your 50s this could be a challenging place to stay long term especially if you're single and if you're single yeah probably even harder yeah but the climate here the the land I mean it's to think about being in anywhere where that's 95 degrees in the states right now or that's beautiful here the traffic's always really easy here there hasn't been any issues with traffic it's easy to get around one thing is though because we live in malakatos and we are out in malakatos if we did not have a motorcycle it would be way more challenging here so like in Cuenca there is abundance of public transportation once you get further out into these kind of areas or further south however you want to look at it you have to be more self-sufficient for sure right yeah for us to like we would have to taxi in town to catch the bus and then it just makes it easier and I think you're having a really fun time it's way more fun to drive a motorcycle here than I would want to be doing in Cuenca for sure yeah like it would be way too scary for me to be riding a motorcycle hats off to you guys to do but for me I'm happier here it's a great place to find your footing and yeah kind of thing get comfortable right so we're definitely having fun doing that in terms of like integrating into a community we kind of touched on that I guess a little bit but yeah we have not been successful in that our Spanish has definitely improved you know we're Beyond transactional to we can hold a pretty decent conversation and at the very least track along even if we can't make sense of the words coming out of our mouth right but we have we do have friends in vilca that are fluent and from their perspective it's still challenging like there is there is a bit of a divide between the locals and the in the expats there yeah so one way to say it is too like we would have had expectations to have Ecuadorian friends yeah and that just has not been a reality for us yet we know people that that is a reality but the majority of people that we talk to that have been here well but they're all few years you know not like 10-year plus kind of people but it's been similar that ecuadorians have not been like close friends yet are working more and I mean they already have their own life so they're not necessarily like concerned with making expat friends right so it's nice to say yeah we want to get down there and integrate and have Ecuadorian friends but if there's not an opening there um that makes it a little challenging and we're not by no means like judging the situation it's just the reality of what our experience has been and what we have been told by others and I think too it could be a deeper sense of that decision to be nomadic or to leave your country of residence or country of birth so we are uprooted we don't have you know long roots here that go anywhere so we are the new people and you know we probably just don't fit in as easily and um so there's a camaraderie that you can have with other expats because of that but it I don't think it's translating to the ecuadorians as far as I can see it seems like no matter what there's a component of strangers in a Strange Land and again when people immigrate to the states like a lot of times cultures stay you know you stay with what's familiar with people who speak your language with people you share a cultural heritage with even though you don't live in that country anymore so that's just the this is the reality of the way it goes would we have thought and liked it to be different probably and if we do move closer into vilka Bamba or civilization in general because we're definitely on the outskirts and we become more willing like you know we've been in this deconditioning place and we become more available to develop relationships and things like that our experience will probably change yeah we'll report back on that but this kind of semi-isolation was intentional because we did want to create a very uh specific Focus both of us did on the work that we've been doing so we wanted to be isolated in a sense so we were both kind of like in monk mode together but we still have our own separate space here free of Temptation because we do like to go to lunch and we do like to do all that I'm so weak it's been easier here to get into a group for sure you want to talk a little bit about the Visa situation sure so we did the professional Visa route which is a great deal in my opinion still takes a little bit longer for us we had some issues with the school records and things like that yeah didn't didn't go as quickly as we wanted so we are hoping to get our permanent resident Visa before November at least that would be like the late the latest it would happen so yeah but we can start like ring you know bank statements and documentation and and things like that so so we are going for permanent which means I think for the first five years you can be gone up to six months or something yeah we're going to want to get that bottle from him you think the Lucas picking it up or no stop chewing on the bottle you can't see him but you know he's there so with the VISA situation yeah for the first five years you can be gone up to six months and then after that you can be gone as long as you want so we are feeling that we'll be here for a while and we do want the opportunity to be able to travel again because we've been in this kind of Visa Purgatory with only having 10 days left to be out of the country on our temporary visas and we do want to visit family and maybe you know actually learn how to ride a moto and we'll rent motives in the states and you know cruise around the when we get to ride Motors through the states and cruise around yes through the non-populated areas of the national state parks and such so um if you're wondering about Lucas and we will we will add in clips of him in the video he's like the best dog ever we love him so much I don't know that we'd be able to be in this situation and not have a dog and he's just perfect yeah he's killer dog man he's so sweet that's all I got that's all you got one thing we do miss um it was nice to at least be around in Cuenca is water that's been an it's interesting situation down here because one there's no big Rivers there's no opportunity for water sports or lakes or anything like that in the south of Ecuador and we knew that we knew that and you know we're in the dry season right now so we're watching like the Browning of the valley like every day it's a little Browner and Browner and uh except for our yard because we have sprinklers kind of that get Sprinklers and hoses sometimes but with that and being even outside of Mount OS we have been put on like water restriction and there are times when we don't have water at all out here which we were not prepared for that at all and there are times when there's just not enough water flow pressure to kick on the telephone so you know sometimes you're making you're taking cold showers and that's something to be aware of if you're going to live in kind of a deserty reason uh region and if you're not in a major city know that those like uh Bill cabamba loses electricity they lose they lose water I'd say that happens to them more frequently than yeah than us like we've never lost power or had no electricity out here well we did have trouble with a breaker that went out and but they fixed it so yeah it wasn't like a problem with the system but we did have some of the water problem that we've had recently with lack of water has been because we're in a neighborhood and the neighborhood has its own system and maybe Something's Happened with the pump some of this stuff is kind of gets Lost in Translation so we don't know if it's the pump system entirely we know that some of it has to do with where we get the water into our neighborhood but but it's hard to get like exact concise answers regarding whatever is going on yep that is that is a challenge here I'd say across the board and that's kind of like a good point of Ecuador our friends our friends came up with a great way to to label this they call it 47 so there's a lot of things in Ecuador that by American Standards North American Standards are about 47 so that might be the quality level the finish level the paint level how good it works you know it's kind of just like fill in the blank and it's I mean it's something to know it's not like a deal breaker by any means but it's just different you know it goes along with our theoretically and the whole idea of managing expectations right you're gonna get get 47 percent and then anytime it's over that you're like sweet baby Jesus like when we went to Uhuru yeah when we went there we went to this restaurant shamuiko and kind of like figured it might be a 47 experience but it was a super super great experience I thought I thought it was fantastic it was it was great in saraguru is a that's a cool Town very clean very little graffiti beautiful yeah it's well run it seems like the indigenous really have a hold of that area and they are in charge yeah other than that we really haven't done any kind of traveling at all we did have our first visitor yeah our daughter Julie came rep in her Boston University so we did have one visitor after almost two years which is I don't know what the statistic is typically but we know some people that have visitors down all the time so nobody likes us that much apparently or is willing to be that adventurous because he doesn't like us ecuadorians don't like us Lucas likes us no we will say like you to come and visit us you have to be really motivated because this is not an easy place to access true yeah Logistics of getting down here traveling it's a pita it's definitely you definitely have to figure a two-day Voyage just to get here it's hard to get all the way you can get to Cuenca in one day if you're lucky but then you still got to get down here and that's another half day at best yeah it's hard to get the flights to line up and and it is amazing how much bus transportation is available here but like the terrain and the roads like you're just not gonna get anywhere fast so even to travel within Ecuador is even if you have a car you look on the map and be like Oh keto de Cuenca that's probably three hours no it's like nine hours nine hours I don't think you're ever going 70 miles an hour not typically in this country you'd have to really gun it so it's that's just an acceptance piece like if you want to go somewhere it's going to be a long trip to get there and the roads the roads just don't stay in the mountains here I mean it's like the Andes are just completely devouring the roads and I don't think the roads here will ever be fixed properly and I don't mean properly you know it could be a quality issue of how they were installed but I think just the way the ground is moving and heaving it doesn't stand a chance you know and even since we've been around coming down to vilka Bamba so you know less than two years or whatever the couple times that we visited before we moved down here there's more like bigger sections of Road missing on the main road the main highway to get from here to Cuenca and I don't think somebody's going to come fix them you know maybe eventually they have some road crews that show up but so far it's something else while looking for houses around here sorry the roads made me think about it like where we live right now it's all paved into our neighborhood up to our house it's all paved that is an extreme abnormality here like most places you're down a dirt road a pretty good distance off of a paved Road and it's uh the roads can be quite rough here you know it's something to consider and I would I mean to me I would put that in with the 47 thing you know 47 percent of the roads are going to be in good shape the rest of them are gonna kind of be close to that 47 might be high on the road situation I don't know if like the spirit of the land doesn't want roads on it or what but when the rainy season comes and landslides happen and you know earthquakes happen here and they don't have to be like major events to cause huge problems when it comes to stuff like that so Ador would be a great place for flying cars yeah yes that would be amazing we have heard that the roads in the oriente and the Amazon are a little better we haven't been there yet but we're finally feeling like a response an invitation to go so we would like to check out like Tana puyo definitely go to Banos I can't believe we've been here two years and we haven't gone to banyas Archie Donuts so yeah that's definitely on the short list the coast we're still like meh after being in the Galapagos yeah we'll go eventually though I want to do the whale watching in Puerto Lopez and I'm pretty sure Ecuadorian Beach kind of guy we just don't really like to be that hot but everybody that loves it good for you yeah everybody can do their thing and I would like to try like Coastal Ceviche and some of the different foods that are available on the coast if there's anything else you guys want to know about or have any questions you know you can ask in the comments below maybe we'll answer them there's uh or we can direct you to other people we can direct you to other people that like to answer questions yeah just a gentle reminder that you know the the biggest impetus for us doing this was to let friends and family know what was going on and if you're we're curious about the Ecuadorian experience you know to share some of ours but yeah if you want to know specifically about our experience those questions we'll probably answer if you want to ask like Visa questions or process questions um there are other channels in Ecuador that do a great job of that or get a real legal expert to answer your questions you know don't trust Facebook and those other types of avenues even but okay so know if you do a wilka ceremony down here plant medicine and the stuff I get myself into I just show up not like understanding how these things work but they're going to shoot it up your nose like to the back of your brain and they're going to do it on both sides and it hurts really really badly so I'll just throw that up PSA be prepared for some serious pain like a cannons going off in your head I won't do that one again yeah probably [Music] they're still hanging in there with us even though we like rarely post anything thanks subscribers your favorites Slim's on the fly out are we out we're out we're out we'll get you some footage of Lucas yeah the people want to be entertained it's another beautiful day here that's kind of like our joke in the morning because every day is pretty much the same and it's like oh another beautiful day Lucas hi Lucas [Music]

Channel: Flynn's On The Fly

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Id: XpKO9bsAIDg

Length: 26min 32sec (1592 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023