Dennisse grew up in Ecuador. I've spent years building businesses in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, from a coffeehouse on West Market Street to a software company and a marketing agency. When Mateo arrived, we started asking a bigger question: where do we want him to grow up?
The answer was Ecuador. Close to his abuela, fluent in two languages, and surrounded by volcanoes, cloud forest and the Pacific.
Latitude Zero is where we document all of it. The paperwork and the logistics. Raising a baby at altitude. The food, the weekend trips and the bigger journeys across South America. The good days and the hard ones.
The name comes from the line that runs through Ecuador's name and its map: 0° latitude, the equator. It's where our new life starts.
Drag the photos around. Make a scrapbook.
From Public Square to Plaza Grande
Drag the slider to travel from where we live now to where we're headed.
Wilkes-BarreQuito
Three kinds of stories
Relocating as a family
What it takes to move a household and a baby to Ecuador: planning, packing, housing, healthcare and settling in.
Everyday Ecuador
Food, family, language and the small cultural moments that make a place feel like home.
Exploring South America
Weekend trips across Ecuador's four regions and longer journeys through the continent, with a little one in tow.