A place high on my list of potential real estate investments abroad is one I haven’t even stepped foot in yet: Cuenca, Ecuador. I was blown away by the prices I saw for land and houses in that area when I was looking at listings while in Quito and everything I’ve read about the city makes me want to spend some time there.

Our correspondent John Lamkin did spend some time there recently and he scoped out the real estate scene in the region. This seems like one of those “can’t lose” propositions since prices  have nowhere to go but up and this city is just now getting on the radar of foreign investors. While there have been a few bubble markets in Latin America lately, they have all been in areas where California money flooded in and there was a lot of speculative investment, mostly on the Baja Peninsula of Mexico and the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. For most of the rest of Latin America, the housing crash taking place in the U.S. has had little effect.

See the full scoop on this attractive area with a great climate: Cuenca, Ecuador: the Next South American Real Estate Boomtown?

I will be detached from this blog and e-mail for a while as I’ll be sailing around the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador on the Sagitta 3-masted ship.

The ship holds a maximum of 16 passengers, so I’ll be seeing the islands in an intimate fashion. Andando Tours is the one running the tours, operating ships from Angermeyer Cruises. The two branches have been at this a long time, with the Angermeyer family actually living off and on one of the islands (after emigrating from Germany) since the 1930′s.

This is not your typical big-group tourist cruise experience. This is a company that does it right in terms of the experience and the environment, so I’m looking forward to seeing the operation first-hand.

Watch for a tour feature story on the trip in the coming months. If you sign up for our newsletter you won’t miss it!