Photos from the central flower market

These long stemmed roses cost $3.00 for 24.

Free architectural walking tour

Cuenca, Ecuador became a Spanish settlement in 1557. The city center is listed as a Unesco World Heritage Trust Site due to it's many historical buildings. The city lies in the sierra of the Andes mountain and sits around 2500 meters above sea level, with four rivers running through the city and mountains on all sides. This geographical position along with it's historical background makes it a wonderful background for some beautiful photographs. The streets and sidewalks downtown are cobblestone or tiled. Every few blocks you may find a plaza with a fountain. Many of the colonial structures have endured with their original craftmanship , some being restored to withstand time. I took a walking photographic tour with my boys as an extra curricular assignment. We walked and snapped anything that was interesting. This was free and it was fun. Here's a few of the photos I took.

Cheap food

Part of saving money when traveling is cooking alot of our meals at home. We do enjoy going out a couple times a week to experience authentic Ecuadorean food, but we also enjoy experimenting with Ecuadorean recipes as well. One of the best things about Ecuador is that it is home to many fruits and vegetables due to the ideal climate. We have been really taking advantage of easy access to locally grown organic fruits and vegetables. There are several "mercado's " in the area that are indoor and sometimes outdoor food markets. Each stall is owned and operated by a separate vendor selling fruits, vegetables, raw meat as well as dried goods like rice and quinoa.

These bags of tomatoes, avacados and onions, were $1.00 each. As you can see there are 10 onions in one bag, 10 tomatoes in the other and 5 medium sized avocados in the last bag. They were bagged, ready for purchase. What a steal!

I got ALL of these fruits and vegetables for $8.60! No joke!!!!!!!

Avacados,mangoes,papaya,plantains,bananas,tomatoes,carrots peas and green peppers oh my!

Our temporary home away from home

We've been in Cuenca, Ecuador for a few weeks now and feel quite at home. We are enjoying the pleasant weather, the beautiful mountain views of the Andes and immersing in the culture of Ecuador. As budget travelers, one of the most important decisions we make is concerning housing. Since we planned on staying put for awhile, we decided on a short term apartment rental. Because Cuenca, Ecuador has become one of the most popular retirement destinations as well as being a must on the tourist circuit, it was very difficult to find a rental to accommodate our budget. Typically you can find a short term furnished rental between $250- $500. When we were here a year and a half ago, we had no problem renting an apartment and we paid $500 for the whole month. This time around there was nothing available in our price range at the time we needed it. Needless to say, we had to go with what we could get and ending up spending a little bit more than we wanted to again. We ended up finding our rental on Airbnb.com. I highly recommend it as your first resource when looking for short term rental. The site is secure, trusted and easy to use. Owner's of properties have listings online with photos and amenities as well as price per night, per week and per month. You can communicate via email with the owner to ask questions or even call them. You reserve the property of your choice by paying for the full rate by credit card. We've used this site several times and have been very satisfied. The apartment we are renting is a colonial style duplex in a quiet residential area. It's in a great location and the duplex has an electric security fence and an alarm. Although Cuenca is considered a safe area it's still nice to have the peace of mind. It is Ecuadorean owned and the hosts are very hospitable and accommodating. Here's the link to the website and listing of our temporary home if anyone is interested : https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1252433?guests=4&s=0QAb

We negotiated with the owner on the monthly rate and ended up paying $900 for the month, which comes out to be $30 a day. Once again, for a family of five traveling, it's almost impossible to find a hostel at that price, so we took it. For our second month in Ecuador, we did find an even cheaper rental, but I will share that in the near future.

28 hours on a bus and we finally made it to Cuenca, Ecuador

The next stop on our itinery is Cuenca, Ecuador. We hopped on a bus and traveled north on a 15 hour bus ride. The bus company we feel has the best service and safety for the money is called Cruz Del Sur. The buses are clean, have a bathroom, and the seats recline "semi- cama", which is like a recliner chair. They also show movies and give you a hot dinner. It's very similar to traveling by plane, except it takes a lot longer. We paid $36 per person. We did look into flights to Cuenca and the best deal we found at the time was around $250 per person. Since we are budget travelers we decided to torture ourselves for a total of 28 hours via bus. We stopped in a town called Piura which we had been to before. We didn't love the city enough to pay $100 for a 2 star hotel for the night, so we kept going. We arrived in Piura at 7a.m. and got on the next bus at 9:00a.m. This bus was not as fancy, but it was fairly clean and comfortable. The tickets cost us $13 each person and took us over the Ecuadorean border in 8 hours. Ok, so five more hours to get to our destination. We arrive at the bus stop in Loja, Ecuador at 5:30 p.m. check the bus schedule to see when the buses to Cuenca are leaving. Unfortunatley, the last one is leaving in 10 minutes. We buy our tickets,which cost $4 each, grab dinner to go and literally run to the bus and jump on. We finally arrive to Cuenca at 11:00p.m. It's nice to be on our feet and off the bus. Which we never had to ride a bus again!

Miraflores, Lima

We flew into Lima, Peru and stayed for a month. We rented a short term apartment off of a site called apartmentclubperu.com. They offer nicely furnished apartments in good, safe locations. We paid about $1600 for the month, which included all utilities and services. This came out to around $53 a day. For a family of five traveling, it was difficult to find a decent hotel at that price. It was a little more than we like to spend but, the plus was that we could cook our own meals and save money this way. We stayed in Miraflores, which is the upscale neighborhood overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Miraflores boasts high rise apartments and condominiums, restaurants, cafes, shopping, parks and a beautiful mall built into the side of a cliff. It is an ideal neighborhood which Peru has groomed to be one of their most attractive tourist destinations. We got to live like locals for a month and discovered little nooks and crannies we had not seen during our last visit. It was nice to enjoy the average 75 degree weather, walk along the waterfront, sit in green parks and indulge in fresh caught seafood.

This seafood platter we really enjoyed at a restaurant called "Sofia" in Chorillos, Lima. It was around $12.00 and was fresh caught by the owner that morning.( This a restaurant Anthony Bourdain went to so, we just had to check it out. We really like Anthony Bourdain and have gone to a lot of the same restaurants he has gone to in different countries. We call it the Anthony Bourdain food tour.)

This is a photo of Lima's skyline and the fishing boats on the Pacific Ocean.

People relaxing on the beach under colorful umbrellas.

Christmas in Lima was surreal!

Pelicans hanging out at the outdoor fish market.

Sign up for Air Watch on tripadvisor.com to get great deals on airfare.

I have to share the EXTRAORDINARY GREAT DEAL we got from signing up for Air Watch on Trip Advisor.com. If you set up a profile and subscribe for Air Watch, you can put in your cities of departure and arrival. It will then send you an email periodically to let you know what the best price other travelers have been booking for that particular month. If you have followed my blog in the past, you may know that we spent over 4 months touring South America about a year ago. Out of all the 6 countries we traveled through we really had a liking for Lima, Peru. So, when I signed up for Air Watch I put Detroit to Lima as my two cities. I received an email late August with an email alert saying that the best airfare to Lima for December $427 rt. When it sends you the alert it shows the airfare for 3 consecutive months. The average price for airfare to Lima from Detroit is usually between $800-$1000 rt. We could n't believe how cheap the airfare was at $427!We thought it was a hoax , actually We were talking about how it would be nice to go somewhere for the winter and ditch the cold temperatures. But frankly, we did not think we could afford to do that this year. It was quite a surprise and we weren't quite prepared for such a nice gift! We tossed the idea around for a few days and weighed out the finances. After much deliberation and prayer, we decided to go for it! As I attempted to book our flight, four days had passed since I received the email email alert. Would the tickets still be available? To my dismay, of course not!Oh well, we missed out. We were really disappointed but it was our fault for not jumping on the opportunity. A week later I received another email letting me know that tickets to Lima were on sale for $417 rt. This was even cheaper than before! We immediately went on line and booked 5 round trip tickets to Lima leaving December 4th coming back March 20th. We were going to escape the cold winter months of Michigan and enjoy the year round 70 degree weather of Lima, Peru. Yippee! We did it. And here we are, as Michigan has record freezing temperatures and snow fall. What a blessing!