(Note: This was going to be a single post about living here, but it started getting clumsy and unwieldy. I'm splitting it up into multiple parts - the follow-up posts will be coming during the next week or so.)
Puerto Lopez Overview
Puerto Lopez is a (relatively) small town on the Ecuador coast with a population of about 13,000. It is located about three hours north of Salinas/La Libertad and two hours south of Manta and Portoviejo. Here is a layout of the town and the places that we frequent most:
(The map is about 1 1/2 miles on a side.) Although Lopez sits in valley where the runoff from seven different rivers run to the ocean, the town itself is fairly flat. (FYI - the locals refer to the port cities by their identifying name; hence "Puerto Lopez" becomes "Lopez", "Puerto Cayo" becomes "Cayo", etc.)
Here are a couple of views of the main road through town, looking north from the south end of town (where the big curve is). This is officially called, "Ruta del Spondylus", or "Route of the Bivalve Mollusk". (It kind-of has a ring to it, right? Sort of? Maybe not.) It was formerly known as, "Ruta del Sol" ("The Sun Route"); when it changed, I don't know. Locally, it is referred to as "RDS", "The Ruta" or just "The Main Drag".
(The town square is located just beyond the church steeple you see in the center of the picture.)
Businesses and Institutions
These are the primary locations in town that are of interest to us:
Banco Pichincha: Other than a couple of credit unions, it's the only bank in town. (I think it is also both the largest and oldest banking institution in Ecuador.) We have our investment and savings accounts here (although we opened them at the main bank in Guayaquil - this is a branch bank), and it also has the only foreign-friendly ATM's in town.
Municipio Building: It's where we go to pay property taxes and register titles. I don't have a picture of the outside, but here's a look at the operations inside. (I haven't seen a dot-matrix printer in a while!)
Primary School: (As far as I know...) There are two major schools in town, although there are several smaller schools outside of downtown. This one appears to have a couple of hundred students.
(This was actually a picture of two policemen guarding a freshly painted crosswalk, but the school is in the background.)
Machililla Park Office: This building houses the headquarters for the entire Machalilla National Park (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machalilla_National_Park). There is one primary veterinarian, Ruben, who oversees animal care for the entire park. During his "free" time, he also provides spay and neuter clinics for animals in town.
Hardware Stores (Ferreterias): There are, sadly, no Home Depots or Lowe's stores in Ecuador. In Puerto Lopez, there are specialized stores for each type of construction/maintenance material that a person needs,
The Oil and Lube Shop
The Paint Shop
Lino's - Tools and Construction Supplies
Town Square: It's an open court for most major town gatherings when the local boys aren't playing soccer.
"Butterman": (You can channel your inner-Pearl Jam here - "I've found a Butterman".) This is where we used to buy fresh, non-separating butter. I say "used to" because he hasn't had any for the past couple of weeks and we think he might be scaling back to selling only Queso Fresco cheese.
Xavico's: They have the best prices in town but not always the best variety. They tend to cater to the small Mom-and-Pop tiendas (shops) located around town, so much of what they sell are bulk packages of chips, etc., single-size servings of condiments or pre-packaged meats (think hot dogs).
Villao: (Pronounced "Bvee-Jao") It's a small tienda run by a sweet older lady. Her prices are okay, but the main attraction is her variety of products. This is the place to go for nuts, balsamic vinegar, decent cheese varieties, etc. She's closed from 12:30p (or so) until 2:00p (or so) so that she and her son can spend lunch together. (She also has the best beer prices in town!)
The Market: This is a view from the back side of the market; it a later post, I'll go inside and show how it operates. This might not be a great picture, but this is the entrance Emily and I usually use instead of walking all of the way around to the front. (We also "rescued" our youngest cat, Tierra, from the back entrance. She was only four weeks old and about the size of a five-year-old's shoe, screaming her little lungs out and trying to climb up the little ramp to get inside where the food was.)
(The little paper signs encourage the vendors not to dump trash in the back but to use the trash bins inside.)
One Final Look: Here's a final look at the town, first from the north:
Then from the south:
The next few blog entries will get into more of the detail of day-to-day operations. Stay tuned!
I understand the beaches there are some of the best in Ecuador. In some of the photos I've seen, it appears that most of the roads are dirt; is this the case, and if so, are they well graded? Is there a decent-sized expat group living there?
ReplyDeleteMark, most roads west of RDS and south of the bridge on the map are paved - east of RDS are mostly hard-packed dirt and graded maybe twice a year. There are about 25-30 expats that I know of in the area, and most of them (not all) speak English. We're not a very big group, but we do have a pretty tight bond.
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