Friday, December 20, 2013

Thursday, December 19, 2013 Six months in Ecuador

Thursday, December 19, 2013


Six months in Ecuador

Today marks six months since we moved to Ecuador. It has been a wonderful, trying, fabulous, frustrating time.  We are legal residents of the country, which means that we have our cedulas (Ecuadorian ID card) and the permanent resident stamp in our passports.



Here are some of highlights:

  • Moved from Guayaquil to the Olon area after we obtained residency.  We are renting a casita from a couple of expats while we look for our own property.
  • Bought a car (some people choose to rely solely on the great public transportation system - we did not want to be without our own car)  Scott detailed the process on his blog.
  • Opened a savings account.  This sounds like a simple task but it was not!  It took us three months to accomplish this task. The items required included: 
    • Color copy of passport picture page
    • Color copy of cedula
    • Letter of recommendation no more than one month old from an Ecuadorian who has an account at that bank (our Guayaquil landlady wrote this for us)
    • A cell phone number (or two - we gave two but I am not sure if they were both required)
    • Two land line phone numbers (we gave the number of our landlady and a lady who did translations for us)
    • Proof of employment, retirement income, or bank balance from overseas bank
    • Proof that we either voted in the last election or were not eligible to vote
    • Copy of the most recent month's electric bill showing where we live
    • Made a trip a week after opening it to pick up the ATM card, which took several hours since the system was down when we first arrived,


Visited a hotel in northern Manabi province that is raising a baby monkey!  Something happened to his mother so they stepped in to raise him.  The monkey walked around on my head.  It was funny - just like kittens like to sit on shoulders, behind someone's head, he climbed right up to sit on my head.  He liked my hair and played with it quite a bit....read more: http://emilbloo.blogspot.com/

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Time for phase three...:Sunday, October 13, 2013

Buying the car-


Time for phase three...: Buying the car: In my last post I mentioned that Emily and I had purchased a vehicle here in Ecuador, a Chevrolet/Suzuki Grand Vitara: It's been wo...





In my last post I mentioned that Emily and I had purchased a vehicle here in Ecuador, a Chevrolet/Suzuki Grand Vitara:

It's been working well for us and we're getting about 50 km/gal!  It doesn't have excessive power and it's not four-wheel drive, so we won't be driving it on the beach (which some people do), but it does everything we need.

Buying a car in Ecuador is a much different process than buying one back home.  In the States, the car dealership provides one-stop shopping that covers everything.  In Ecuador, we get to run all over the place to get it done.  There are multiple times where I had to suppress my inner Lewis Black and exercise patience: ....read more: http://sbphasethree.blogspot.com/2013/10/buying-car.html

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