Cuenca, not surprisingly, doesn’t have a travel guide. (Heck, up until last October 17, it didn’t even have a map of the bus routes -- for a city with a couple dozen bus lines serving a half-million people.) All it has are 8-12 pages in Ecuador guidebooks. It’s a small city in a minor country. Still, it’s the world’s number-one destination for gringos like us -- desperate to expatriate and looking for the coolest place to relocate. As such, Luxury Latin America calls Cuenca “the next South American boomtown.”
I know a little something about boomtowns, as my beat for the past 20 years has been Las Vegas, arguably the greatest boomtown in the history of the world. I covered hotels (18 of the 21 largest in the world), restaurants (200-plus on the Strip alone), real estate (one of the biggest boom-and-bust markets ever), and culture (history, gambling, entertainment, events, casino news and trends, promotions and bargains, personalities, and much more).
So I’ve found myself a new boomtown, though by comparison, Cuenca is a mom-and-pop market to Vegas's supermall. And there's no bona fide guide -- the first time I’ve stumbled across a place that should have one, but doesn’t.
So these Access Cuenca pages are in the process of becoming that guide. I know a few things about guidebooks too, having launched my 30-year career in publishing at Moon Publications, the travel-guide company that competes with Lonely Planet. There, over a period of 10 years, I edited scores of guidebooks and wrote three of my own: to Alaska, Nevada, and Vegas.
Whether or not all this information ever becomes an actual book, time’ll tell, though I’d bet on it. Fact is, after three decades as an editor and packager of books, I probably can’t help myself. Also, unlike in the U.S., English-language books are valuable in Ecuador. And I’m curious about producing books there: Ecuadorian graphic artists and printers and unit prices and the whole publishing scene.
In the meantime, this space is evolving into the first-ever travel guide to Cuenca (plus peeks into the process). It will expand exponentially starting in early March when I return for my six months and can delve deeper and deeper into all things Cuenca, as well as all things Ecuador at the Access Ecuador pages.
