10 Reasons Why We Left Canada and Moved to Loja, Ecuador

"The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things".

Banos, Ecuador

We have had a lot of questions about why we decided to uproot ourselves and move to South America, and specifically why we chose Loja, Ecuador.  It's not the city that most expats choose but it held some attraction for us for very specific reasons. We have spoken about some of this in previous posts. But I am getting way ahead of myself. 
Don't worry, we are going to do this in 10 installments as opposed to one long blog that no one will read to the end. Remember as a kid, the Saturday morning serials at the movies, where the cowboy in the buckboard went over the cliff at the end of the episode and you had to come back the next Saturday to see how, or if, he survived?  (Come on, some of you are as old as me!)  Well, this is kind of like that. We'll jump off a cliff each time and you will have to come back next week and see if we survived.

Episode One

Terry Kelly flies in to Visit us in Panama

   This all began in 2018 when I turned 75. By that time we had been living on a boat for about 15 years and although we loved the life style it was time for a change. Both of us were bored and I have to admit that I was tired of the stress that comes with trying to keep up with all the work that it takes to maintain a large, older boat. We had both had a taste of the travelling lifestyle when we went offshore for three years on our sail boat and it seemed like we were working just to pay bills and had little or no time to be with each other and enjoy life. Sharon had accomplished almost all she wanted to at South Arm Community Center so it was time to get selfish. I personally have no problem with being selfish, which most of you can attest to, but it was harder for Sharon. But I have learned through the years that once you get Sharon turned in the direction you want, just tie yourself to her and hold on for the ride.
   The main thing we wanted was an adventure. We wanted to take ourselves out of our comfort zone, challenge ourselves, see if we still had the spirit that made our offshore sailing such a satisfying experience. We wanted to strip ourselves of the things which were tying us down. I also hoped that learning a new language would keep my brain from becoming porridge. We had taken a three month tour of South America by bus while the boat waited out hurricane season in Panama and had had a great time, so we looked there first.

Top of the Andes between Chile and Bolivia

   Now South America has a lot of stunning countries and adventures that are free for the asking around every corner. On our bus tour we had been to Santiago Chile and Valparaiso, Mendoza in the Argentine wine country, the Atacama in the Andes, Bolivia, Machu Picchu and the Nazca Lines in Peru, and had only scratched the surface. So we sat down and started to think about what we needed to do to make this happen and what we were actually looking for in a new home. A little plug here, a magazine called 'International Living' can give you all sorts of ideas.  It can also become addictive, and on a cold winters night when you look up from pictures of sun dappled beaches and watch the rain pouring down, it can stoke a dangerous sense of dissatisfaction. You have been warned!
   So, Reason Number One boils down to ... ADVENTURE

But that word means a lot of things, to a lot of people. So, in future episodes, we will boil down in greater detail what it meant to us, and what we needed to be sure of before we took the leap. We had a lot of 'must haves' and we will go through them all and explain how Loja fit the bill. Suffice to say that, for us, the buckboard had gone over the cliff. Tune in next time to see whether we survive!