LIFE GOES ON

CUENCA THE BEAUTIFUL, IS 7000 FEET HIGH UP IN THE ECUADORIAN ANDES


As an external auditor with Arthur Andersen, constant travelling to Quito and Cuenca continued to be a part of my work. Travelling did not bother me at all; in fact, I began to like it much. In one of the trips to Cuenca, I was the senior on the job to perform the final audit of Ecuadorian Rubber Co. the tires’ manufacturing company, a subsidiary of General Tires Co. from Dayton, Ohio; I was assisted by two young and brilliant colleagues; Cesar Lucín and Julio Chang. At the end of the first day of work, at about six PM, we decided to go eat at an Argentine type stake house, right across the Cuenca airport, only minutes away from our client’s premises. At about 7:30PM we had finished eating and since we were not in a mood to go to back to “El Dorado” hotel where we were staying, we decided that we wanted to explore and flavor a little of the night time life in Cuenca, so we took a taxi and asked the driver to take us wherever the Cuenca night life was; the answer, in the typical intonation of Cuenca Spanish was; “I’m sorry, but here in Cuenca, the nightlife takes place during the daylight time” (disculpen señores, pero aquí, en Cuenca, la vida nocturna es de día). We couldn’t help but laugh our hearts out to such a statement, but, laughable as it was, it was kind of true, Cuenca, the third largest city in the country, was a very conservative city in those days, and there really wasn’t any nightlife worth being called so, within the boundaries of the city. Things have changed so much since (almost forty years ago), that Cuenca today has nightlife just as active as either Quito’s or Guayaquil’s. In fact, Cuenca, a beautiful city surrounded by four Sierra rivers, is a cosmopolitan city today, it has become a highly looked after place for American and European retirees who want a nice place to live in, at an affordable cost.



CUENCA KEEPS THE SPANISH HERITAGE INTACT IN ITS ARCHITECTURE



In mid May, 1972, only two and a half years after I joined The Firm, I was already being treated as if I already were a Manager and was sent to Mexico City for a Latin American meeting of AA&Co’s tax managers and Partners, where our discussions concentrated on how to help our clients to reduce their tax liabilities by maximizing the correct utilization of the Tax Law and its regulations. At the end of this meeting I took my first vacations and decided to go to Canada to visit my brother Guido who was living in Toronto. When I arrived in Toronto, I found that my nephew Leonardo (and his girl friend Anny), the oldest son of my sister Lilita, whose house I was living at in Guayaquil, were sharing with Guido a small apartment in downtown Toronto. Leonardo and his American girl friend had decided to live together and were only transitorily staying with Guido until such time when they found a definite place to live in. As a big brother which I felt (for Leonardo), I didn’t like seeing these two young people living like hippies and advised them to get back to the States, get steady jobs which would allow them to go back to college, and get married if they felt they belonged to each other and wanted to maintain a serious relationship. Soon after, Leonardo got a good job in upstate New York. They came to Ecuador and got married with the blessing of Leonardo’s parents and surrounded by the whole family, then, they went back to New York. Leonardo and Anny had four children, are now the grand parents of five beautiful children, they are very happy together and live in Guayaquil. They continue to blame me for their happy marriage. As for my brother Guido, he had a job as a cook in a nice steakhouse in Toronto, but he had split from his wife Monica, who never showed any interest in working, she only wanted to have a good time at the expense of her husband’s hard work. This is a story I will have to write a separate chapter about.
From Toronto I took a plane to Ottawa and from there I flew the newest intercontinental plane, the Jumbo 747, all the way to Amsterdam. It was a very nice flight, for the first time in my life I was “crossing the pond”, for the first time in my life I was taking a long transatlantic fly in a time when the airlines really babied you (even to their coach passengers like me) with excellent food, good wine and even after dinner liquor. I was beginning to fulfill my lifetime dream of visiting Europe, the continent I loved so much because of its History, because of its culture and because the heritage it had left in our continent and in our blood and genes.
I was taking a 40 day holiday tour and wanted to do it at my own pace, with no specific schedules or routes. I had planned to decide where to go on an “as you go” basis, and had bought a book to do it under a tight budget, “Europe on Twenty Dollars a Day”. It had all kinds of information and directions about Europe, including countries, cities, hotels, trains, restaurants, museums, monuments, shows and all other things and points of interest. The actual budget was not far away from the $20/day, if one really wanted to follow the book. Once I got there, however, I did not abstain from things I found attractive. I had brought with me a total of about $2000 in travelers’ checks and I had no intention of bringing back much of that with me. True, I abided by the book in many things, but when it came to shows, food and entertainment, I was not totally faithful to it.
As soon as I arrived in the Netherlands I bought a one month “Eurorailpass”, a train ticket which allowed me to travel throughout all Western Europe without restrictions. I stayed at a nice and clean hotel in Amsterdam for $10/night, but what mostly called my attention was the very small room I got, something that I had to get used to as my travelling went on, because it was the same thing throughout all the countries I visited in Europe. It made me miss the spacious rooms in all hotels I had been to in the Americas. I stayed in Amsterdam and made quick one day trips to various cities within the Netherlands. It was beautiful to see the blooming tulips everywhere I went and I was pleasantly surprised at the fact that most Netherlanders spoke very good English, which made my tour a lot easier and pleasant. At the end of the fourth day in The Netherlands I decided to go to Germany and took a train to go to go to Frankfurt and visit the in-laws of my senior Jerry Windham. The girl at the counter in Amsterdam told me in perfect English that I should change trains in Colony, which I was very alert to do it by watching the names of every station my train stopped at, except that I missed a minor detail: Colony, in German is spelled Köln and not as I expected. After a few hours on the train, an officer in the train approached me and asked for my ticket, which I showed to him. The train’s man looked at me with an angry face and started to speak in German, asking questions I had no clue of, because I did not understand a word of what the guy was saying. A bit intimidated as I fell, I asked the man if he spoke English, he shouted back “NO ENGLISH”, then, making use of my little French I asked if he spoke French, and the man answered “NO FRENCH”. I tried again asking if he spoke Spanish and he repeated in an even higher voice “NO SPANISH”. My frustration grew exponentially and at moment, and addressing to the rest of the people in the same car in the train, I asked if any one could help me speaking English, French, Italian, or Spanish or even Portuguese, but I only saw many faces staring at me. Only then I knew I was totally helpless.
In my next posting: BEAUTIFUL PARIS