An integral part of our stay in Cuenca was Spanish instruction at the Simon Bolivar Spanish School. For the other 29 members of our tour group, learning basic Spanish was a major goal. All of us had our own guide/teacher to immerse us into the culture and familiarize us with the language. I used my own teacher, a young man named Angel, primarily as a photographic resource. He helped me get photographs I would have otherwise never made. I would meet him every day at the school, and instead of retreating to a classroom, he would cheerfully say “Vamos” and we would be on our way to another photographic adventure together. One day, I was waiting for Angel to arrive, and noticed the school’s poster, featuring a huge portrait of Simon Bolivar himself, blockaded by rhythmic stacks of plastic chairs. The name of the town itself is even larger here than Bolivar, and I thought this image would make an excellent opener for my in-depth series of impressions of this seductively beautiful city.