I met a woman who'd built her dream life on a farm in Ecuador. It pushed me to rethink mine.

"My friend's mother, Carmen, now 59, grew up in this region and, after spending several decades abroad, returned to pursue her lifelong goal of running her own farm. Before coming back home to make that a reality, she had built a cleaning business in Australia. Esmeraldas felt worlds away from Toronto, where I'd spent most of my 20s before leaving over seven years ago, when life there began to feel too fast-paced, predictable, and expensive."

"These days, I live in Ecuador, where nearly everything I'd heard about Esmeraldas, both the province and the city, painted it as dangerous. "It's racism. It's not like that at all," my Ecuadorian-Australian friend told me one evening after a woman warned us not to go. After living and working in both Ecuador and Colombia, and traveling widely across Latin America, I've heard plenty of opinions about plenty of places. When the invite came to visit Carmen's farm, I accepted."

Sinead Mulhern left Toronto over seven years ago for Ecuador seeking a slower, more affordable life. She traveled eleven hours to Esmeraldas to spend two weeks on her friend's mother's farm. The farm sits among banana leaves, coffee trees and free-ranging chickens, and neighbors still travel by horseback. Carmen, the friend's mother, returned to her home region at 59 to pursue a lifelong goal of running a farm after decades abroad and after building a cleaning business in Australia. Esmeraldas carries a reputation for danger, but local perspectives challenged those warnings and the visit reinforced the decision to live in Latin America.

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