By Christopher Lux
With everything sold but our house back in North Carolina, in September last year my son and I arrived in Cuenca. We came ahead of my wife since she had to wait for cooler weather to bring our two large Catahoula Leopard dogs on the plane.
I had to start my new job, and my son came along. Together we went to meetings, workshops, conferences, and classes. Nobody seemed to mind the four-year-old coloring and reading in the corner of the room.
When we first arrived, we stayed in an Airbnb apartment near El Centro. Dano, the owner of the apartment, drove us to a furniture store to buy beds for our house. He showed us the market where we could by affordable furniture and gave advice about keeping dogs in Ecuador.
Our house was rented for us a month earlier by our extended family who happened to be living in Cuenca. Our first week, they took us to dinner, showed us around town, and helped us get the house ready to move into. We lined up painters and a plumber to make a few changes.
After a week in the Airbnb, we moved into our house. It didn’t feel like home at first. We were in a new country, and we were in a neighborhood far away from El Centro and other gringos.
Soon, as cooler weather arrived in the States, my wife and the dogs arrived in Quito.
The dogs were too big to fly from Quito to Cuenca,
so we arranged to have them driven down by the famous Journeyman Jack who specializes in relocation.
Jack and the dogs drove through the night. My wife stayed in a hotel and flew to Cuenca the next day.
