The paradox comes to life

Thursday, June 27th, was going to be a day of action!

We had three items on our agenda for the day: register with the US consulate, open a savings account to facilitate our investor's visa, and open an account at Club Correos.  We had a good breakfast (eggs and fruit) and prepared clothes for the day.  We don't have an iron, so a steam shower was the best we could do to get the wrinkles out of Emily's dress, a pair of khakis and a shirt.  Not the best results, but good enough for government work (especially in this case), so off we went!

Narcissa, the housekeeper at the hotel, called a taxi for us.  After waiting thirty minutes to arrive, the driver showed up and we were off - first destination: the US Consulate.  I knew where the consulate was and I've been getting familiar with the streets in Guayaquil, so I was little nervous when we started going off the beaten track.  Emily and I were both ready to jump from the taxi if needed.  Shortly enough, however, the driver pointed straight ahead to a building with a garish motif on the front (sorry, no picture) and the Consulate was the building after it.

We walked up to the point of entry where there were three soldiers manning the entrance, quite possibly the only people in Ecuador that don't smile.  (I know that they have a difficult and stressful job, and I fully support and respect everything that our service members do; it was just different from the expressions that I've seen on most of the locals.)  We explained the purpose of our visit (to register) and were directed to another staging area where we were told that registration occurred between 8:00a and 11:00a, Monday through Thursday.  It was 11:30a, so we will have to go back next week.

Oh well - on to the bank!  On our way there, we had the opportunity to walk through Parque Centenario.  It was founded in 1920 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the independence of Guayaquil:

We have had three banks recommended to us.  At the first bank, Banco de Guayaquil, we asked the lady at the information desk (via Google Translate - awesome product!) if someone could assist us with opening a savings account.  She Translated back that the bank was not currently allowing "foreigns" to open accounts.

We were on our way to the second bank, Banco Bolivariano, when we had a realization.  We're not trying to open a savings account; we're trying to open an investment account for the purpose of obtaining a visa.  We met with a representative of the bank who presented us with a list of requirements for opening the account.  In addition to identification, we needed the following:

• First requirement: an endorsement from our place of work.  Emily said that we are not working, but that did not compute with the bank rep.
• Second requirement: an endorsement from our current bank in the US.  We had a bank statement showing account balances, but it wasn't the official "endorsement" that the rep was looking for.
• Third requirement: an endorsement from another Ecuadorian bank.  Since this is our first bank account, it's hard to get such a thing.

The bank rep also said that might be able to get accepted if we have a reference from someone who already has an account at the bank.  We are going to have to work with our visa facilitator on this.  Since she already has accounts with one or more of the banks, she might be able to provide the reference that we need.

The third bank, Produbanco, delivered the hammer; this is the paradox that we've heard about.  When we talked to the (very cheerful!) rep there, she said that she would open the account for us but that we had to provide our visa number.  When I said that couldn't obtain the visa without the account, she deferred and said that once we had the visa we would be able to open the account.  Emily and I went in circles with this charming lady (smiles all around!) until we realized that nothing was going to happen.  We thanked her for time and left.

(Emily mentioned later that she had heard of situations like that.  In that case, we should have asked to speak to a manager or someone higher up the the food chain.  That person is authorized to open the account for us and list the visa number as "pending".  We will have to try that next week.)

On our way to our next stop, Club Correos, we saw some excitement!  I'm not sure what was happening, but the fire department was called out to resolve a situation in a parking garage.  Here's the scene and the cherry picker in action:

Across the street was something that we hadn't noticed before.  The CFN building has a number of framed murals painted on the side:

But I digress...


"Club Correos" (Correos del Ecuador CDE) is a service that will receive packages sent from out of the country and hold them for pick up.  We don't have an urgent need to get this done, but we thought we might as well while we were downtown.

Our impression was that a person signed up for an account with notification information, and that Correos would contact them when a package had arrived.  We would need to tell them when we were receiving packages and what they would contain.  Unfortunately, our Spanish/their English was not good enough to be able to understand the process, much less to be able to create an account.

Strike three.  Although we weren't able to accomplish any of our objectives, we did learn some valuable information:

1. We need to improve our Spanish.  We are spending about two hours a day on DuoLingo.com and it's helping immensely!  However, the bank doesn't need to know that "mi gato bebe leche" (my cat drinks milk) or any of the other language elements that I've learned so far, so it's going to require more work for both of us to be able to communicate effectively.
2. It's Ecuador, it's their country and their environment.  For us to live hear, we need to improve our Spanish.
3. Learn The Language, Idiot!  Maybe that's too strong, but see points one and two.

This is our tenth day of living in Ecuador.  I've learned a lot but also realize how much more there is to learn.  It's a great ride - I'm not getting off now!