We arrived in Ecuador on August 1st and left for Peru on August 31st. In between we went to the Galapagos, the Amazon Rainforest and the middle of the world, among others. Here are our general observations from our first country in South America.
Language – since we have been living in Spain for the last few years, we are fairly used to life in a Spanish-speaking country, but as a traveler instead of a resident, we have a lot more interaction with the tourism infrastructure, like taxis, planes and restaurants. We’re a little surprised at how little English was spoken in Ecuador so we are definitely glad we had a few years in Spain first to at least get a reasonable level of Spanish before undertaking this trip. We have met plenty of non-Spanish speaking foreigners who seem to be getting along fine, however.
(Lack of) car safety: I don’t know where to start with this. First of all, it was less than 6 months ago that N was still in a 5-point harness car seat. Now, we typically jam 4 people into the backseat of a taxi (or longer distance shuttle even), usually without seat belts at all. Passing on winding mountain roads is common, and we drove on roads that had waterfalls pouring down right on top of them.
Dollar Coins – Ecuador has used US dollars as its official currency since 2000, when a financial crisis caused them to scrap their own currency. The bills they use are the same as the US, but if you ever wondered where the rarely used dollar coins are, they are all down in Ecuador! We randomly got a few dollar coins in the US before coming to South America, and I was worried we wouldn’t be able to use them in Ecuador. HA! Little did I know, that is almost all they use. I don’t think I have seen a dollar bill here. They also have their own $.50 coins, and other small change that is different than what is used in the US (along with the US coins).
Venezuelan Immigrants – Around 4 million Venezuelans have left their country because of the economic and political crisis. Many have found a home in Ecuador and they’re apparently not very welcome. On several occasions we’ve heard “Venezuelans” muttered angrily under someone’s breath. One of our guides did it at some incident and we asked how she knew it was Venezuelans. She replied ‘because Ecuadorians would never do that.’ It was flimsy logic and a little disappointing especially as Ecuador experienced their own crisis not so long ago.
American Immigrants – Cuenca is home to a lot of American expats. We don’t have great data on this (two conversations with different taxi drivers), but apparently they’re not very welcome either! “They don’t learn the language, they don’t integrate, they don’t work or create jobs and they drive prices up.” We have no idea if this is true or even a widely held complaint, but it was again sad to hear.
Corruption – On our trip to the Amazon, we were pulled over by the police at random and in the middle of nowhere. Our driver was missing some document or another and at first it looked like we’d be stuck for sometime while this was all sorted out. However, the driver simply handed over $20 and drove on. This was low level corruption at its finest. Sadly, high level corruption is also a big problem. Where do all the petroleum and tourism dollars go? Any Ecuadorian we spoke to replied ‘corruption’ with a defeatist shrug.
Safety – Before we left we googled things like “is Ecuador safe?” I know. Stupid. The search wording makes it impossible to avoid the many horror stories of robberies and muggings as people share their worst experiences online. It’s like asking a doctor, “Will I die tomorrow?” Legally the doctor can’t say “definitely not” so you might be told something like “doubtful, but maybe” and then you walk home crying. Nevertheless we still bought luggage locks and various other safety devices we’d happily lived without through three other continents (and we’ve had our phone stolen in Spain, our credit card details stolen in the US, gently mugged by a street vendor in Paris and narrowly avoided being pickpocketed by some really shady men in Italy). Things will happen while traveling and maybe there’s a higher chance in South America, but we found Ecuador to be very safe. However, we’re not going out late at night and we are very cautious. When it does happen, we try to remind ourselves that most people are good and these tend to be crimes of opportunity.
Bus Travel – Bus travel is fairly common in South America, ranging from very basic to pretty plush. In my research for our trip, I found that flights within a country tended to be fairly inexpensive, but flights between countries were more expensive. Because of that, we decided to cross from Ecuador into Peru on an Azuay overnight bus for $20 per person. Our bus was scheduled to leave at 9am, and would arrive in Mancora, Peru around 5:00am, with a stop around midnight to go through immigration as we crossed the border into Peru.
At the bus station, there was a huge crowd of people with big bags waiting to get onto our bus, and we started with a fairly inefficient system of everyone standing in the narrow space between buses while our driver shouted out various destinations in order to attempt to get the bags packed in order of destination.
After a bit of chaos, the finally let everyone on the bus at the same time, and we headed up to our reclining seats on the upper level of the double-decker bus. I had read that the buses would be cold, so we had our sweatshirts and jackets and were ready to get some rest.
We were ready to get to sleep right away, however, the bus decided we would all rather watch an Adam Sandler/Jennifer Aniston movie on the TV screen at the front of the bus, dubbed into Spanish and played at a high volume. They also came around with bags for everyone containing sandwiches with highly questionable meat and Cokes (we skipped it, not least of all because it was like 10pm at that point).
Once the movie was over, we settled in for a fairly smooth ride (which says a lot coming from people prone to motion sickness!) until we got to the Peru border. At the border we all had to get out and went through a process where we first went to a desk to get an exit stamp from an Ecuadorian official, then right away got in line to get a stamp at a nearby desk to enter into Peru.
The process was very efficient and because it was the middle of the night, only our bus was there so we were all processed quickly. After one quick stop for customs to check our bags, we were ready to get back on the road.
At the border, we did see a bunch of UNICEF tents set up to home Venezuean refugees.
The bus continued on and arrived at our destination in Mancora, Peru early at 4:30am. All in all, the bus experience was a good one, and made us comfortable planning to do it again as we cross more borders in South America.
Now that we had mastered our first South American country, we are ready for more adventures as we continue south through the continent! Peru is coming up next!
