Visa step one: complete!

July 15th was a good day!  We saw online that our check for the investor CD had cleared our bank in the US over the weekend, so we should be able to complete our purchase of the investor CD.  After a breakfast of corn flakes, fruit and "La Lechera" (partly skimmed sweetened condensed milk) -

 - we were off!  We walked to the Banco Pichincha (about two miles) and met our translator, Gaby, before sitting down with our banker, Carlos.  After ten minutes of review and confirmation, we had our deposit certificate!

(Check out the rate of return: 4.85%!  Take that, Wells Fargo!)

The only thing that we're waiting on now for our visa application are notarized copies of our translated apostille documents.  Since the check for the CD wasn't supposed to clear until the 17th, Gaby thought she had another couple of days to get them done.  Once we had our CD, however, she said that she would finish them quickly and that we should be able to apply for our visa either by the end of this week or early next week.

Another step completed!

Parque Histórico

Today's trip was to Parque Histórico on a peninsula where the Rio Guayas meets the Rio Duale.  The park has three sections: one that reproduces some of the buildings from Guayaquil 100+ years ago, one that depicts rural living and one that recreates some of the native jungles/environments for Ecuador's indigenous plant and animal species.  Some of the building scenes are still being constructed, so this post is mostly about the animals and plants that we saw.  Time for pictures!

(Please forgive some of the quality/framing of these pictures.  I pride myself as a photographer, but the only camera with me today is my cell phone.)

This is the church next door to our apartment.  (We were standing here waiting for our driver, Daniel, to take us to the park.)  I guess we won't be attending Saturday (Sabado) services; we're not between the ages of 13 and 35 years.

Here's the layout of the park - half buildings, half animal environment:

This is one of the re-created street fronts on the townscape.  Banco Territorial is in the middle.  Some of the recreations are false fronts built to show the full town; these, however, are full buildings.  They are not yet furnished, however, so there are no inside pictures.

A small cathedral and confessional.  The walkways along the top are pretty neat.  There are much more impressive cathedrals here in Guayaquil and more in Cuenca, but this one was still charming.

Back to the park.  The entire mangrove forest has a series of walkways built through it (the view is from a tower built for eagle viewing):

My guess is that these two guys worked together to plant a tree.  Unfortunately, one planted the top while the other planted the bottom:

 Mangrove forest:

Real flamingos, not the Florida front-yard kind:

Parrots and macaws:

 Symbiotic flowers growing on the trees (much like orchids do):

And, of course, a picture of the most beautiful species of all!  (along with the flora)

 PVC sprinkler systems have nothing on this setup:

While we were waiting for Daniel to pick us up and bring us back to the apartment, Emily noticed these guys painting an office building.  (Joe Ryan would not approve.)  I'm glad I had a career in IT!

While we were waiting for Daniel, a school bus with 100-some 10-12 year-olds arrived for a tour of the park.  As they walked past us, some of them were saying, "Hola" or "Buenos tardes".  Shortly, though, they starting saying, "Hello" or "Good afternoon".  When we would reply in English or ask them, "How are you?", they would start laughing and walk on, talking or giggling with each other.  Without intending to, we brought a lot of smiles to their faces and ours as well.  Definitely one of the highlights of the day!

Movie time!

While we're waiting for our facilitator to contact us, we've been doing different things in the neighborhood around us.  Today, it was off to San Marino mall to see a movie!  It's an easy 25 minute walk from the apartment and it allows us to see the local businesses as well.

Before the movie, we grabbed lunch at the food court.  I got a Pizza Hut personal pizza for $5.00 with fries and a soda (boring, I know, but I wanted pizza) and Emily got lasagna ($3.99 with soda) from a different place.  When she came back, she had two pieces of lasagna in ceramic dishes with real silverware.  She had pointed at the lasagna picture behind the counter and said, "Dos, por favor".  Instead of interpreting that as meaning "item number two", the clerk thought she meant two pieces.  We really need to improve our Spanish!

On the way to the theater we passed a shoe store.  Here are some of the prices (yikes!):

These shoes look like they should sell for $10-$15 at Target!  Imported goods are just so expensive!

The movie we chose was "El Hombre de Acero" ("Man of Steel", the new Superman movie).  It was dubbed in Spanish, of course, so we were interested to see how much of it we would be able to understand.  The theater does seem to have at least one showing of each movie in English each day, but it's the last showing of the day and doesn't start until around 11:00p.  I don't feel like walking the streets of Guayaquil after 1:00a.  Here's the ticket:

Tickets on Mondays and Tuesdays are $4.30 each.  We were 15 minutes early and were the first people there, so we sat in the middle of the seats.  Almost everyone else who came after us sat in the top row.  The theater was like those in the US, but there weren't any ads or trivia questions during the pre-movie wait; just a blank screen.  We got a Coke and popcorn for $5.90:

There was no butter on the popcorn, but that's how we like it.  They had a butter machine next to the popcorn machine, but the clerk never asked if we wanted any.

The first thing to show on the screen was a focus pattern (sorry, no picture!).  The camera operator adjusted the projector until the picture was in focus.  After that, four quick previews (all of them featuring Sylvester Stallone, it seemed) and on to the movie.  No cell phone reminders, no ads of any kind - straight to business!

It was a pretty good movie (the guy who plays Zod is a pretty bad looking dude) and we understood about 10% of the dialogue.  Action movies don't require much dialogue, but there were a couple of times where everyone else in the theater laughed at a joke that we, of course, didn't get.  Good fun, though!

It's a straight shot from the mall to our apartment - they're on the same street about a mile and a half apart.  We caught a taxi at the mall (they're vetted there for safety) so we could get back before sundown.  On the way, the driver explained that he was going to take a side street that would allow him to avoid the U-turn in front of the hotel; no problem.  When he started taking a road that I knew didn't lead to the hotel, however, we were done with him.  We were stuck in traffic, so I said, "Aqui es bueno" ("Here is good") and Emily and I both jumped out of the cab.  I tossed him two dollars and closed the door.  I don't think he had any bad intentions, but we're not going to wait around long enough to find out.  I think he was just confused as to where to go.  We walked the final half-mile to the apartment.

Timmy's pitching tonight, so we're listening to the Giant's game while I'm typing this.  Another day, another adventure!

Some progress at the bank

Warning: this is going to be a pretty dry blog entry - no pictures, no humor, no funny situations.  It does mark another way-point reached in obtaining our residency visa, however.  Today, we achieved something that we hadn't been able to do for two weeks: we started to make inroads at a bank.

We met our translator, Gaby, at Banco Pichincha next to the World Trade Center here in Guayaquil.  Gaby had come highly recommended by our facilitator, and she did quite well.  She is a native Ecuadorian who is studying towards her bachelors degree in English and is planning to get her masters degree abroad.

After waiting about 20 minutes to see a bank rep, Gaby and Emily sat at Carlos's desk while I stood behind them (the cubicle was quite small and only had two customer chairs).  We explained to Carlos that we wanted to open a savings account so that we could wire transfer money to the bank; we would then use that money to buy an investment CD, a requirement to obtain our investor's visa.  Carlos told us that we could not open a savings account for a number of reasons, many of which we had heard before.

Carlos then explained (with Gaby diligently translating) that we could put money directly into a deposit certificate that would satisfy our requirements.  We couldn't wire-transfer the money, however, so it would either have to be cash or personal check.  Since I wouldn't feel comfortable walking around with that much cash (not to mention it would take over a week to get that much from the ATM), Emily wrote a personal check to herself.

There were no forms to fill out for this purpose, however.  Carlos wrote up a letter stating that the check was for the purpose of obtaining a CD.  Emily signed the letter and the deposit slip, and we were able to have the check deposited!  We now have to wait 12 days for the check to clear; once it does, we'll have our CD.

Some additional notes for anyone else trying to do what we're doing:

• We brought color copies of our passports and an electric bill to show our address.  Carlos made copies for us, but we were prepared anyway.
• The only receipt we received was a little two-inch slip showing the very basic information.  It's not much more impressive than a gas pump receipt, but it'll do the job (I hope!).
• Banco Pichincha wasn't our top choice of banks (Banco Bolivariano and Banco de Guayaquil were), but they do seem to have the largest presence in Ecuador (at least on the coast).  Bank solvency is a issue; we avoided co-ops.
• The interest rate we're getting is 4.5%!  Somehow, we should be able to leverage that against a mortgage in the US and get property for free...
• We met with Carlos at 1:00p.  We didn't know this, but his lunch break was at 2:00p.  As we got closer to his lunch break, he started working much faster and making things happen.  I don't know to plan such a thing, though.
• Once the CD is opened, we will be able to open a savings account (with some additional documentation).  No checking accounts until we have our cedula, however.

Once we have the CD, we can file papers for our residency visa.  Progress is being made!

Food - part one of many, I'm sure

First of all, Emily and I have now been here for two weeks!  Five nights in the hotel; seven now in the apartment.  Every day presents new opportunities.  We spend 2-4 hours a day working on our Spanish and have made some progress, but we have a ways to go.  When we aren't downtown chasing official business, we walk the streets of our neighborhood to try to immerse ourselves more into the culture here.  (Don't worry folks; we only walk neighborhoods that we've been told are safe, and we only do so during the day.)

Now that we have the option of preparing our own food, I'm going to share what we've encountered so far.  I'm sure that I will have many posts on food in the days and (hopefully) years to come.  These are my observations after two weeks.

The food in the local restaurants is very good, even if some of it might be unfamiliar to us.  Today's lunch was fantastic: cheese and pasta soup, fried fish, rice, salad and pineapple juice.  $2.50 each.

We're going to do more of our own cooking, so we've also been going shopping.  The local mercados have a large variety of fresh, inexpensive vegetables, so we try to buy what we can from them.  (Cilantro - 25 cents a bunch; limes at 5 cents, whole pineapple for $1.50, and I'm sure those are gringo prices.)  After soaking them in Vitalin to get rid of any nasties, they are good to go.  Emily made salsa tonight (pico de gallo) with fresh tomatoes, onion, cilantro and lime.  Eat your heart out, Baja Fresh!

(Yes, that's our powerful two-burner range in the background.  It's a far cry from our kitchen in California.)

We buy most of our staples at the chain supermarket SuperMaxi.  The variety of items is just a little different from what's available in the US.  We are also buying our meat from SuperMaxi (which many ex-pats do not!).  We have yet to find a local carniceria (butcher shop), however, so we have to make do.  I'm looking forward to it; an 18 ounce package of ham sandwich meat costs $5.45.

Here are some cuts of meat that are available.  Chicken breasts and pork chops are available, but pricey!  (Weights are in kilograms, so multiply the weight by two and add 10% to get pounds).

The hamburger is definitely not lean!

There are plenty of other cuts available: pig hooves, tongue and the like.  This is a mystery beef cut:

Prices are also a little peculiar.  A box of orange juice shows on our receipt as costing $1.3839.  The price rounds correctly, so we pay $1.38.  I guess if you buy too much of something, you'll wind up rounding to that extra penny.

Locally produced items are much more affordable than imported brands: Bounty paper towels are about four times the cost of Familia, a local brand.  The quality isn't quite the same, but it works.  Some things just aren't worth the back-home craving, however:

(There are about ten mini-bars in this bag.)  We're excited to stay with the local offerings, so we're adapting to the available food and methods that are used here.  It will probably a while before we go all-in, however:

Fried scorpions - bon appetit!

July 1st ramblings

This post isn't going to have a specific theme or topic; it's just some of the things that we encountered today.

We decided to go to the Consulate today to register our residency here.  While we were waiting for the taxi to take us downtown, a parade broke out!

(FYI - this is the street level view from our apartment entrance.)  We saw a few of these parades around town.  Apparently, July first is a day for celebrating, although we're not exactly sure what.

Into the taxi and on to the consulate!  The other day I posted that the US Consulate was next door to a building with a really strange motif on the front; I was wrong.  The Consulate is the building with the strange motif:

Getting in requires going through two separate security checkpoints.  At the first checkpoint, we removed everything from our pockets, had our bags searched and had to take the batteries out of our cell phones.  (Not sure why on that one.)  We were wanded down and sent to the next check point.  Here, they took all of the items from our pockets (change, breath mints, phones, keys, etc.), put them in a little open cubbie and gave us a claim ticket for the cubbie.  After walking through a metal detector, we were able to reclaim our backpacks but not the contents of the cubbie.  Our phones, etc., basically sat on an open shelf while we conducted our business.

Registering with the consulate was less than impressive.  The guy behind the window made copies of our passports and had us write our contact information on the back.  No forms, no formal procedures.  (We had tried to register online but web site could never confirm our registration.)  After ten minutes, we were back outside with our cubbie contents reclaimed.

Since Emily and I must have a masochistic side to us, we went to two more banks to try to open an investment account.  One lady told us that we could only open an account if we worked for an Ecuadorian company.  (If that were true, however, we wouldn't need the account.)  The receptionist at Banco del Pacifico told us that we could open an account only after we had been in the country for six months.  Besides the fact that she never asked how long we had been there, our tourist visas would have expired long before then.  At least the excuses are getting more creative!  If there is a standard list of requirements for opening a bank account in Ecuador, it must be a secret.

(Later, Emily was playing with the translator and found the phrase, "I would like to purchase a CD".  We're going to try that one the next time we go downtown.  I don't know if it will make a difference, but it can't hurt; we're 0 for 6 so far.)

Lunch today was at a restaurant across the street from the apartment.  If you look at the top picture in this post, it's on the ground floor of the three story white building in the middle.  The sandwich board advertised shrimp soup and roasted chicken, and that sounded good!  They were out of the shrimp soup, however, and we were served something along the lines of onion soup with parts:

By "parts" I mean the extra items that they put in the soup to flavor it.  There were chunks of bone and pieces of corn cob to add to the flavor.  The main course was fried chicken, rice and potato salad:

All this, along with a glass of juice, for only $2.50!  Life is good!

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!