Temperatures in Cuenca never get really hot or really cold. It can get as low as the 40s (Fahrenheit) at night, or into the 70s during the day, but the temperatures are mild enough that homes typically don’t have any heating or cooling, not even fans. You might open or close windows, but that’s it.
But they do use gas for cooking and for water heaters. They don’t have piped-in natural gas like you’d usually find in urban and most suburban areas in the United States. Instead, trucks drive around with tanks of gas, similar to the tanks you might get in the USA for a barbecue grill. I presume the gas is propane; Hank Hill would approve.
Of course, since many people here don’t have cars, these tanks are delivered to homes, rather than using the convenience store exchanges often seen in the United States. But one thing I found surprising is that the trucks that deliver them play music here. It’s similar to the music played by ice cream trucks in the United States; when you hear the music, you know you can go outside and flag down the truck.
It turns out that the music is a fairly new development here in Cuenca. Before the city mandated a change, the gas truck drivers would honk their horns as they went through neighborhoods. The music is a lot less annoying and serves the same purpose.
But what confused me is why customers would need to flag down the gas trucks. I would have thought that most homes would need gas deliveries on a regular schedule. There might be occasional times when you need more tanks or fewer tanks than usual, but you’d probably get deliveries once a week, every two weeks or whatever.
It turns out that customers who flag down the trucks don’t have extra gas tanks. You have to pay a deposit on the tanks, and it costs more than the gas inside them. So there are plenty of people who have one tank for the stove and one for the water heater. When one of them runs out, it’s really important to get a new tank as soon as possible; you can’t just wait a few days for the next scheduled delivery.