Now let's take a picture tour of the apartments.
This is a photo of the front top apartment and part of the bottom apartment. The front door (private entrance not shown here) has an intercom connected to the kitchen and master bed room.Add $15/month for each additional person more than 4, of any age to a maximum of six people. This is not "profit" but only to pay for extra utilities/wear used by each extra person.
CONVENIENT LOCATION! Good Bus and school bus Service in Cuenca. Public busses cost 25 cents per trip, half price for seniors.
Bus line #12 stops in front of the apartment, goes to/from the natural hot springs called Banos and to/from U of Cuenca among many other destinations in Cuenca. Line #7 stops one block away, goes to/from: the U of Cuenca, the big flea/food market, and Avenue Huayna Capac which is a very accessible street for "el centro" and many other points of interest.
City busses now in use are generally clean, generally secure, lurch a lot because of all the stops and jerky drivers but are a viable transportation option much cheaper than a taxi. Taxis cost from $1.50 to about $3.00 USD depending on the destination.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
Water
Literally, Cuenca has some of the world's best low mineral quality potable water (chlorinated and produced by municipal ETAPA), however a "Pure Water ®" dealer delivers large jugs of purified, not distilled, water by truck in the neighborhood if you contract with them for X quantity of water per month. City water is almost neutral PH trending PH 7.2 to PH 7.3. We personally see no use for "purified water" since Cuenca's water originates from springs in the Cajas National Reserve close to town and there is no mining, no big agriculture and no manufacturing in that watershed, no pollution anywhere near those sources. If you remove the lid from the pot during and after it boils to let it sit overnight, the any latent chlorine is eliminated.
The apartment's water heater is a propane gas "on demand" hot water heater (no water heater tank to run cold), If you like long hot showers, you'll be happy. Gas tanks are exchanged empty for full, approximately 15 kg of liquefied gas delivered to your door for $2.30 each tank. Gas is subsidized by the national government but in 2016 it's said the subsidy will quit and the price of gas will increase to about $16/tank. That is still relatively cheap compared to Europe and USA for the same amount of gas.
Cell Phones: Cuenca does have Blackberry service and there are many hotspot WIFIs for phones that access Internet. There are two main providers, Movistar and Claro. Movi is cheaper but has a little less towers nationwide so there are more "dead" spots than with Claro which costs more. Personally we use Movistar but also have Claro phones "just in case". ETAPA, Cuenca's municipality, has its own cell phone service but it uses a regular "house" land line number and costs no extra to call to any land line in Ecuador. It is like a portable land line you talk over most places in the Cuenca area. The sound quality is usually better than the cell phone providers. We use and prefer this service and rarely use our Movi and Claro phones if ever.
How many people will the apartments accomodate? Rent is calculated for a family of four or less. Six permanent inhabitants however is the legal limit (health code) of these apartments.
Please, NO:
No pets with the exception of water aquarium aquatic species.
No businesses where the public can access the interior of the neighborhood compound.
No (with exception to visitors) children under the age of 6
No smokers. That means/includes smokers: "trying to quit" or "I'll smoke outside". The past has proven we must adhere to this policy for tobacco smell is unacceptable. We do not tolerate drugs or cannabis products in the apartment. We must be strict on the later for our tenants are going to be of high moral standards as are neighbors in our compound. As to tobacco usage indoors by tenants or guests thereof, the smell of smoke is repugnant and unacceptable for non smokers won't rent stinky apartments.
No perpetual "fiesta party animals". This is a quiet suburban conservative community which can be appreciated by other quiet conservative neighbors. Normal reasonably quiet and not late night parties are of course welcomed and accepted.
No hippies nor radical looking people including "alternate lifestyle" types. Ecuadorian neighborhoods including this community are extremely conservative so it is best that our tenants are like everyone else and have lifestyles that are moral and; legal in nature.
The tenant(s) of course may have guests/visitors for days or weeks at a time at no additional rental charge. But in excess of four people over one month please pay $15 additional per month if the total of occupants exceeds a total of four, and that is only to cover the cost of any extra utilities used.
We prefer:
Tenants who have sensible social events, moderate (no loud music or other loud noise) parties terminating around 12:00 midnight to 1:00 AM at the latest. The people in this neighborhood are quiet and work in professions and have children, so they want quiet nights during normal sleeping hours.We prefer:
We prefer married couples or couples who plan marriage only, unless tenants are single religious missionaries or female low profile retirees.
Especially, our apartment is attractive to internet based distance workers and traders of equities, ECFs, commodities, precious metals, and FX (foreign currency exchange). Heavy and constant uploads and downloads involving 1/4 GB to full gigabytes may become slower in daylight hours on Cuenca's system. Our WIFI was designed for "medium-family use" such as chat, email, normal searches, video conference, trading stocks, commodities and currencies, blogs and occasional music downloads. It is not intended for entire movie downloads.
We include a free transfer to our apartment from Cuenca's airport, or from your hotel, or from the Cuenca bus terminal, arriving and leaving Cuenca for initial arrival and final departure directly to and from the apartment. The land lord is Susana Castro who is an Ecuadorian but speaks good English.
IMAGES of the APARTMENT
Living Room, bright light through 2 huge bay windows, designed custom draperies.
End of the corridor near the bedrooms
Inside the front bay window is a rock garden. Presently it's planted but you must water and maintain it. This photo was taken before it had plants but the tenant may plant plants if desired. Tenant maintains the garden in any case. 
View from a bedroom doorway in view of the corridor including the "loft". The storage areas are accessed from the loft and have doors. There are three storage areas. The glass window in the foreground is one of two secondary bedrooms. You can see there are an abundance of windows for natural lighting. The wall and ceiling color is stark white. We are not willing to change the color nor have tenants change the color without express permission from the landlady. We chose stark white because it's reflective and easy to spot paint...cutting costs which cuts rent.
All 3 bedrooms do not face a street, reducing outside noise. The apartments are in the extreme back of the compound, the most quiet location in the compound.
Note the wrot iron railed staircase painted a "natural patinized copper" color going up to the attic and storage area.
One of two skylights is directly above this photo's position, the other is in the laundry room to the right of this photo's origin.
Community garden in the front of the apartment. Stone masonry and a beige colored wall and well maintained garden.
Master Bedroom 1st view, well lit through a large window.Telephone aparatus is included in this bedroom and also an intercom telephone to the outside entrance door as is the kitchen. The telephone connection has a desk phone but tenant can supply for example an "air phone" extension system if they wish. The phone jack works for all phones so you may disconnect and store the phone we provide in preference to yours.
The telephone is a wireless "air" citywide system (not cell) and works with any standard telephone set. A telephone set is provided which has caller identification and message/recorder. The phone set we do include is ready to talk, but you may substitute it with yours as stated above.
This is another view of the master bedroom including the doorway and the bathroom door, the entrance door to your private bath.
The bathrooms are ceramic tiled, easy to sanitize. The showers are tiled with ceramic and they are not bath tubs and don't serve as bath tubs because the ceramic chills the bath water resulting in a less than hot bath. The shower enclosure has a shower curtain that is included.
ABOVE: Front electric gate, entrance to community of 12 families on Av. Primera de Mayo. Not shown is a newly added community sign: "Playa de Yanuncay", the actual name of our community, so delivery services and guests find it easily. A handheld remote control for this gate is provided that will work from your living room window as well, so you don't have to leave the apartment to permit entrance of vehicles, deliveries (pizza, DHL etc.) and other vehicular traffic.
This is a view of the nice open grassy park and jogging trail directly across the street from our community gate. The park has children's playground equipment. The brook Rio de Yanuncay is directly on the other side of the Eucalyptus trees seen in the background of this photo. There is a grassy shaded level area good for picnics, wine and cheese, meditation or reading beside the brook. This park is secure and expect to see joggers and fast walkers especially early morning. Unlimited rainbow trout are caught also in this brook, and NO LICENSE IS REQUIRED in any part of Ecuador, including here. This is a free country.
The images below are Google Earth images of Cuenca with the apartment's approximate location in the yellow circle labeled "Apartment" in the first image below. The Green lines delineate the "city proper" of Cuenca. We're on the Southwest part, North is up. Computers with small screens won't view this as well as larger screens.
In the middle image above, you can see a more magnified image with neighborhood features and the proximity to a concrete bridge connecting Primira de Mayo to 10 de Agusto.
In the image above, the green lines denote the 12 family compound itself and the apartment with three white cars parked out front, and the park across the street with jogging trail etc.The Google Earth coordinates for the exact front porch for our circled apartment above are:
2 deg 54' 33.50" S by 79 deg 01' 14.23"
THANK YOU FOR VISITING AND FOR VISITING CUENCA!
