Today we left Guayaquil and arrived in Cuenca. Today we went hiking at El Cajas on our way to Cuenca. The views there was absolutely amazing. One of my travel mates made a joke that they couldn’t tell if their breath was taken away by the views or by the high altitude. After the hike, we had the rest of the bus ride to our next resting stop. We had bagged lunch on the road provided by Diego’s wife, and then later on we had dinner at Paul Amos’s residence. There, Paul made us all dinner and talked with us about his experiences as well as how he was able to retire so early on in life. Our conversation began with talking about how good the Cuenca water can be, and that it is actually one of the cleanest waters in Latin America. He also discussed how he was able to retire to Ecuador on a visa which was due to his collegiate experience with Penn University. Since he went to a highly regarded school, Ecuador allowed him a visa in order to contribute to the community. An interesting topic that he brought up was driver's licenses. In Ecuador, there are two main ways to get a license for people with visas. He could either get his driving record from the United States or he could take their driving test. Also, it was interesting to find out that the written tests are very similar with a set amount of questions that could be asked, and randomly selecting a small portion of those questions to grade.
Expansion of knowledge
Expatriates
Paul Amos had an in depth discussion about becoming an expat in Ecuador and how this affected his life. I had researched more into why people want to be expats in Ecuador. Paul talked about how much cheaper it is, but I wondered about the appeal of it to be worth moving away from the life you knew. The Forbes article, "Retired Expats In Ecuador: What Life's Really Like For Them," and the author discussed the average life of an expat. The author talked about how those who moved to Cuenca to retire were tired of having the same life of working very hard for little reward and not building the life that they had wanted. In Cuenca, they are able to form bonds with people their age and meet new people like they were younger again. The article also talked about the money that they had made in their working life lasted longer in Ecuador, so people were able to live better lives than the average person there. I found it fascinating that some of the expats call themselves "economic refugees" because they could not survive with their income anymore in the United States.
Works Cited
Eisenberg, R. (2019, May 5). Retired Expats In Ecuador: What Life's Really Like For Them. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2019/05/05/retired-expats-in-ecuador-what-lifes-really-like-for-them/#6dde1d73150f