This is Cuenca, the city that Sebastián Yatra would choose to live in Ecuador

Sebastián Yatra, the Colombian singer and composer of ballad, Latin pop and reggaeton, said on his Twitter account that if he lived in Ecuador, he would choose Cuenca, a beautiful intermediate city, crossed by four rivers, south of the inter-Andean region of Ecuador and located 2,550 meters above sea level.

Yatra, winner in 2021 of the MTV Millennial Awards as Viral Artist of the Year, at the Kid's Choice Awards Mexico in the Catchiest Rola category, said on his account that “I would live in Ecuador, for Cuenca, up in the mountains”. At the moment his comment has 3.4 thousand replicas, 24.4 thousand likes, 739 comments and hundreds of thousands of interactions by fans of the Latin American artist.

Shortly after Niels Olsen, Minister of Tourism of Ecuador, wrote to him in response: “I don't blame you, Sebastian! He sent you the details of the Nomad Visa by DM”, which stands for personal message or private message.

The Nomad Visa is a bid to stimulate tourism in Ecuador, promoted by the government of Guillermo Lasso and launched in December last year. With this program, the Andean country plans to reach 2 million tourists by 2025. Olsen said that “we expect to reach 800,000 tourists (in 2022) and by 2025 to 2 million tourists.”

Sebastián Yatra was born in the spring city of Medellin, in 1994. His experience as a Medellin lasted 5 years when his family decided to move to Miami, a port city located in the southeast of the Florida peninsula, in the United States, and settled around the Miami River, between the Everglades and the Atlantic Ocean. Its climate is tropical monsoon characterized by heavy rains in summer and an average temperature between 27° and 32° from March to April, and during May and June the maximum temperature ranges between 38° and 48°.

Different temperatures are that enjoyed by Medellin in Colombia or Cuenca in Ecuador, which ranges between 22° and 26° with slight variations throughout the year, which suggests that both cities could have in common the memory of the origins of the Colombian artist.

Another of Yatra's confessions is that he would live “up in the mountains” of Cuenca. It was always believed that what is officially called Santa Ana of the Four Rivers of Cuenca is encased in sacred mountains. The Pachamama, Guagualzhumi, Las Monjas and others belong to ancient elevations that served as walls and corridors to Incas and Cañaris, the aboriginal civilizations of today's Basin. Today they are tourist attractions for hiking located just over an hour away from the city center. The ascent begins on a rocky and slightly steep outcrop. On the cusp of Las Monjas, for example, you expect a cross about ten meters high and a spectacular panoramic view of Cuenca and its surroundings.

One of the most important myths that circulate around this site is that at the top there is a slope in the shape of an immense crater that is where the ancient city of Cuenca, founded less than half a century before the arrival of Iberian colonization, was really located. There must have been the intense confrontation that the history books collect between the Incas and Cañaris over the occupation of the city of Guapondelig, which the Incas changed to the name of Tomebamba and which later became the administrative center of the northern Inca Empire.

During the colonial period, already in Castilian, the town of Cuenca built the city following a modern urban layout according to the founding act given by Gil Ramírez Davalos on April 12, 1557. Due to independence and the republican period in the 19th century, the architecture of the city of Cuenca these days brings together landscapes offered by the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Calderón Park, Gran Colombia Street or Calle Larga.

Architecture, climate, gastronomy, tourism, order and security come together in this beautiful Ecuadorian city that attracts the attention of artists such as Sebastián Yatra, the first Colombian to present at the most recent Oscars.

Yatra soon responded to the Minister of Tourism of Ecuador. “Thank you Niels. I'm coming,” he said. The musician has scheduled performances in Quito and Guayaquil in October of this year. You will surely be seen walking through the streets of Cuenca one of these days.

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