Today was about running errands. After a simple meal of toast, potato cakes and tea at the hotel (price included), we headed to Mall del Sol, the largest shopping mall in Ecuador. It's next to the airport, a $4 ride from our hotel on the Malecon.
Note: I'm trying to include prices where appropriate. One of the reasons that US expats move to Ecuador is for the lower cost of living, and I want to try to give an appreciation of that here. I won't divulge all prices - many things that people want to obtain are subjective, such as cars and houses - but I will try to indicate the items that are directly comparable to prices in the United States.
Another note: I refer to people as US expats and my former country of residence as the United States; I don't use the terms "American's" or "America". The people of Ecuador and South America also rightfully consider themselves Americans.
Enough rant. First mission at the mall: update the Garmin SIM card to include Ecuadorian mapping. The guy working at Super Paco didn't speak English, but when I showed him our Garmin and said, "por Ecuador", he got out his folder and showed us where we needed to go. That's a mission for another day.
Second mission: get a cell phone. The primary cell phone provider in Ecuador is Claro, and (unlike the US) sells phones with prepaid minutes, not plans. We went to the Claro store and paid $60 for this beauty:
It doesn't do useless things like surf the internet or take pictures. Instead, it makes phone calls, stores contact information, has a color display and even has an FM Radio built in! I should have place a quarter next to it in the picture - it's smaller than a deck of cards!
I'm making a joke, of course. Emily and I are keeping our old Android phone and cancelling the Sprint account. Those phones will function as wifi data terminals and application devices, but the Samsung Android doesn't have a replaceable SIM card to work on networks down here. Without data and phone service available for the Android, they're unplugged from any pre-defined service provider.
To buy minutes for the Claro phone, it's as easy as going to a kiosk. The kiosks are located all over the city, and allow you to buy a dollar amount of phone time. (We're not sure, but we're guessing that minutes cost different if they are used locally vs. calling a different cell zone.) We bought $20 worth of minutes, which we think is worth about 400 minutes in our local calling zone. More information on this as we use the phone.
Final mission: grocery shopping and household goods pricing. Eventually most of our living will be beach-side and involve tile floors, so we priced melamine dishes and serving ware. This was a price that we found at Target in the states:
The prices are slightly lower than $2.49 a plate at Mega Maxi in the Mall del Sol, so it's more cost effective to buy them here than to ship them or check them as luggage. The variety is also much greater.
We also came across a really cool collapsible Coleman cooler that we had to have ($47):
We have no refrigerator or other way to keep water and drinks cold, but we can buy ice and this baby works perfectly.
After that, back to the hotel. Empanadas for two again (different place) and a pint-sized fruit cup for less than $4 total. We're closing out the night with Tim Lincecum pitching for the Giants and a hopeful win against the Marlins.
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