Loja

I headed to Loja, Ecuador in mid-November for a long weekend (Friday to Tuesday) at their annual Arte en Vivo festival. It’s two weeks of live performances — dance, theater, and music, and most of the events are free.

Kirk and I were interested in Loja as a place to settle down, but didn’t have time to visit on our exploratory trip. Ironically we had reserved an Airbnb, a driver, and a guide to go there the week that Kirk went into the hospital.  With everything cancelled more than a year ago, the guide Jonathan Poma was kind enough to bank our prepayment, and he took me around Loja for Saturday (tour of Loja) and Sunday (real estate tour of the area) for this November trip.

I liked Loja quite a bit.  It was most of what Cuenca is, but smaller, and without the gringos.  I absolutely loved the downtown — compact but with lots of great restaurants, bars, and shops.  Very good vibe.  Interestingly price wise food and housing was generally comparable to Cuenca.  Most of the places I visit are cheaper.  Rentals are scarce now, as parts of Loja currently have a water crisis due to some infrastructure issues, which raises the prices in the unaffected areas.

The other thing I loved about Loja was the Spanish that was spoken.  Very slow and musical, with all syllables pronounced clearly.  I liked that aspect so much that I worked out a deal with my Airbnb owner to have his place for the month of March.  My plan is to spend the month there and do some intensive Spanish classes, away from any opportunity to speak English.  My Spanish is basic and transactional, but I’m certainly past the gringos who only use present tense for everything.  And I have no illusions of being fluent.  But I know how much harder it is to keep Spanish in my head, a task that will only get more difficult with passing years.  Hopefully an intensive month will cement it in my remaining cells.

The first day there I befriended someone who was there with slack rope performers.  I ended up hanging out with them for most of the night, and occasionally going off to see other performances.  They were a blast.  They even had me try — with assistance from two people I could make it all the way across the slack rope. 

While hanging there I met a friend of theirs, a performer with a children’s puppet theatre. I saw them the next night and really enjoyed them.  Their show was a cultural history of Ecuador and the show, being aimed at children, was right on my level.

I also saw a local heavy metal singer (great voice, but basically a lip-sync); took in several folkloric dance troupes (entertaining, even in the rain), and stumbled into an organizational meeting of the festival when I went for a beer (interesting to see the process).

Loja is famous for the high quality of their coffee.  Apparently they currently have the Golden Spoon, signifying the best coffee in the world.  The really good stuff goes for hundreds of dollars a kilo and every bean is hand-selected.  The normal stuff is markedly better tasting than the coffee I’m used to, and for me to tell the difference, there must be a huge difference.  They have a free passport book that lists the top coffee shops in town, and you can go around and get it stamped.  Which I did.  It’s milder Arabica coffee, so I could drink several cups a day if I generally confined my consumption to mornings.  And there was a coffee festival in the historic center, so I could knock off several places in one stop.

Also had some great food, especially breakfasts at the coffee places.  There was a wide variety of cuisines, plenty of vegetarian options, and tasty Lojano specialties.

I’m not sure I could live there permanently — I admit I might miss the ease of having a gringo community available if I wanted it.  But I’ll find out in March.  I was surprised at how much I liked Loja.

We’ll see.