Three Bedrooms and a View of the Andes for $150 a Month

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Read more about Ecuadorin International Living Postcards—your daily escape

Dear International Living Reader,

"We're renting for $150 a month."

Suzan and I had just met a new friend over breakfast at Meson de las Flores, a classic little beauty of a colonial hotel in the heart of Cotacachi, Ecuador. Our new friend said that he and his wife had recently moved here from North Carolina, and our conversation quickly turned to the rental situation in this tidy little mountain town.

"You have to look around a bit and get to know the locals," he said, "but we found a great place right here in the middle of town. Three bedrooms, with a huge yard for the dog."

I shook my head again. Maybe the altitude up here in the Ecuadorian Andes was playing with my hearing. Three bedrooms? And a big yard for the dog? For $150?

Suzan and I have been asking around since then, and we've confirmed it with several other expat couples who are making Cotacachi their new home. The highest rental from a local we've come across is $185 per month...and that's a three-bedroom as well.

Of course, you can pay a lot more for rent here in Cotacachi. For example, you can rent one of the new adobe-style houses (built mostly by expats) in one of several outlying gated developments for $450 to $650 per month. But "outlying" is a deceptive term here. Several of these developments are just a 10-minute walk from the main square of town.

But there's nothing wrong that we can see with living in the middle of Cotacachi. It isn't exactly like living in downtown Quito or Panama City. It's more like living in downtown Smallsville, but with some of the most breathtaking mountain scenery I've ever seen.

They don't roll up the streets here in Cotacachi at 10 p.m.—you can still meet friends in the central park or have a late dinner at one of four or five good restaurants in town. But at 10 p.m. you can walk to the park or the restaurant right down the middle of the street without too much fear of being run over.

The other night, we went for a stroll and stopped to listen to a group of teenage boys singing around a park bench. I kid you not. One played guitar, and the others sang a local tune in pretty good harmony. They weren't doing it for money, and it wasn't a protest...they were just singing for fun, right there in the park.

That's apparently the way the kids pass the evenings here...that, or strolling with their boyfriends/girlfriends, or cruising slowly around town packed into Japanese sub-compacts making cell phone calls to each other.

In the week that we've been here, we've used the word "bucolic" several times a day. In fact, I used it twice before I knew exactly what it meant...it just sounded right. But looking it up, I find that it fits: "of or relating to the pleasant aspects of the countryside and country life."

That's Cotacachi and this area of the Ecuadorian Andes in a nutshell. It's agricultural land, and everything grows here. The public markets in Cotacachi and nearby Otavalo are brimming with an incredible variety of absolutely fresh produce. I saw a local mother carrying her toddler and a cabbage she'd just bought...the cabbage was bigger than the kid.

Things grow here because Ecuador is directly on the equator, so the growing season never ends. And since it's on the equator, the climate here is always the same...cool and comfortable. Some months are dryer or wetter than others, but that's about it for weather, even at 8,000 feet elevation. Pack a sweater and a jacket, and you're set for the entire year.

And guys, hats are standard equipment up here in the highlands. As a hat-lover, that suits me right down to the ground...and good felt fedoras start at about US$12 here. It's hat heaven.

But that's not the main reason that Suzan and I are looking a little more seriously than usual at lock-and-leave condos here in town. Having a place in this area to spend the summer months when Merida, Mexico, is too hot for our comfort is sounding like a really good idea. And we've found condos here in town—new, good-quality construction—starting at $47,000. Three-bedroom condos, in fact.

That's getting pretty close to a no-brainer.

But right now, Suzan and I are going to walk back down to the leather shops. Cotacachi is also the leather working capital of Ecuador, with six blocks of shops along the main street. We want to revisit some fine leather bags and jackets we saw for a third the price of similar stuff in the U.S.

We're getting pretty comfortable here, pretty quickly. More next week.

Best regards,

Dan Prescher
Publisher, International Living