Cuenca, Ecuador.

The first time we came here was three years ago, back when “travel” still meant a couple of weeks away before returning to real life. These days, we spend six to eight months a year on the road, but back then, this was new territory.

 

Barb, my wife and the mastermind behind every great travel adventure we’ve had looked at me one day and said, “Want to go to Ecuador?”

“Sure,” I said. “For how long?”

“Two months.”

Two months. That’s not a vacation...that’s a life shift.

 

Up until then, travel meant packing light, maybe tossing in one decent outfit, and avoiding anything that resembled routine. But this? This required a new mindset entirely. This was living...living somewhere else. Cooking meals, grocery shopping, doing laundry… except now it was all in a different language, a different culture, a different rhythm. Familiar and foreign all at once.

 

We rented an Airbnb, not just a place to stay, but a place to live. Full kitchen, washer and dryer, space to breathe. And the moment we stepped outside, everything changed. New sounds, new flavors, new ways of moving through the world. It was exactly what we didn’t know we were searching for.

 

We learned how to navigate a new city, how to exist beyond our comfort zone. Simple things became small victories. Buying groceries in Spanish, figuring out public transportation, understanding what’s said… and what’s left unsaid. It challenged us in the best possible way.

And we loved it.

 

People always say that as you get older, you need to keep your mind active. Well, nothing sharpens you quite like dropping into a completely different world and figuring it out day by day. It’s humbling. It’s energizing. It’s alive.

 

Two months later, we went home different people. Wiser. Restless. Wanting more.

 

So we came back.

That second visit was supposed to be three months. It lasted three weeks. Civil unrest in other parts of Ecuador (not even in Cuenca) set off alarms back home. The State Department issued warnings, family members worried, and reluctantly… we left.

 

We landed back in the U.S. in the dead of a Chicagoland winter. If you’ve ever lived through an Upper Midwest winter, you know it’s not for the faint of heart. On our way home we stopped in to Florida for a while, then a month later found ourselves wandering the streets of Madrid.

 

But Cuenca stayed with us.

 

And now, three years after that first leap, we’ve just wrapped up our third stay here...three full months.

This time was different. Deeper. Richer. We didn’t just visit, we connected. We built friendships, both with fellow expats and locals. We found our rhythm here, our favorite spots, our favorite people.

And somewhere along the way, without even realizing it, this place stopped being a destination

…and started feeling like a home.

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I think we’ve found our forever winter home.

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See you on the Journey,

Rock and Barb