Living in Puerto Lopez: Shopping

One of our keys to successful living in Puerto Lopez is learning where to shop and what the limitations are on products here.  Most of what we shop for on a daily basis, as expected, is food.  Let's start by looking at non-food items first.

As I mentioned in the previous post, there are specialty shops for non-consumables.  A couple of these are:

• The ferriterias: These are the hardware stores that generally concentrate on a single category of items.  I mentioned a few in the previous post, but there are other ferriterias that cater to specific vertical markets.  This one, Chino Godoy, specializes primarily in tires and PVC products:

• Street vendors:  I'm not counting the beach vendors here that sell blankets and jewelry; they pretty much walk the Malecon and beach, targeting tourists.  The vendors that I'm thinking of are the ones that walk all over town trying to sell a specific item, almost like a door-to-door vacuum salesperson from the 1960's.  I saw a young guy on Sunday (~20 years old?) walking the back streets trying to sell bicycle kickstands.  I can't imagine that he sells many of them or that his margins are that high, but I wish him all the best!
• Household items:  TIA is the "big" department store in town, selling groceries, clothes and household goods.  Additionally, there are two stores that sell plastic items - everything from storage totes to salt-and-pepper shakers.  The larger of these is located on the west side of RDS at the very southern end of town.
• Utilities:  Probably the two most necessary items in any household are water and propane.  Most tiendas sell 20-liter bottles of purified water for $1.00 each:

(Oops!  I had to slide in a picture of Luna waiting for the new water bottle to be installed.  Gratuitous, I know!)  This picture shows a rack of bottled water outside of Villao (note the brooms on the left side of the store)

:

AgipGas, located just south of the bridge on the east side of RDS, sells the ubiquitous yellow bottles of propane for $1.60 each.  (That's for a refill with deposit; a new tank costs between $50 and $60).

I wasn't sure how to describe the grocery vendors, so I decided to start with the small ones and work my way up.

Almost every street corner has a local tienda.  Usually no bigger than a single-car garage, it's a place where you can make an emergency trip for milk, diapers and (maybe) ice cream.  The prices are usually a little high, but you can't beat the convenience.

There are a few (what I call) super-tiendas in town.  Xavico's and Villao fall into this category.  They both sell groceries as well as personal products (soap, deodorant, etc.).  Villao is easy to identify because of the large display of brooms out front whenever they are open.

The big gorilla of stores in town is TIA (Tiendes Industriales Asociados).  Like a traditional department store, they have sections for groceries, clothing, cleaning supplies, some hardware/automotive, place settings and cookware.

One of the things that I find interesting about TIA are the promotions that they run - buy something, get something else free!  Some of these make sense -  buy a six-pack of beer; get a free mug:

or buy a package of sliced ham...

...and get a free hot dog!  (Maybe it's a sausage or salchicha.  I don't know - not interested.)

Some, though, I just don't understand.  Buy a four-pack of toilet paper and get a free dinner plate?  Cause and effect, I guess.

My favorite place to shop, however, is the mercado.  The food is fresh, much of it is grown or raised locally, and it's GMO free.  Here's an overview of the layout.  (Please forgive the crudity of this model; it's not to scale and I didn't have time to paint it.)

Food Court:  On any given day, there are up to six booths open selling almuerzo (lunch) for around $3.00.  It includes fish (sometimes chicken), salad, rice and a glass of juice.

Fruit:  Most of the fruit is familiar to what I had in the States.  Some new ones, like maracuya and guanabana, are fun to discover and experiment with.  Here are a few looks at the fruit vendors down the central corridor of the market:

A look down the meat (carne) aisle:

Our favorite meat vendor, Oscar, is located at the far end of this aisle on the right.  He grinds hamburger fresh for $2.50 - $3.00/lb.  His price depends on his mood, I think; we've been going to him long enough that we don't get "Gringo'd" anymore.  (If he tries, he knows that we'll usually leave and come back a different day.)

Both vegetables aisles look pretty much the same.  We have two different guys that we go to; it depends on whether we're looking for "stock" vegetables (carrots, peppers, etc.) or flavorings (cilantro, parsley, and the like).

I can't leave out the fish and shellfish guys!

Here are our shopping results from a couple of different days.  A bag of "peanut butter" (it actually just contains pureed peanuts - no butter or salt added) for $1.00/lb:

Vegetables for beef stew (about $1.00, I think):

Thirteen pounds of Porter House steaks from Oscar ($39.00 at $3.00/lb):

Fruit! (A few peppers thrown in as well.)  I don't recall the price, but it should have been about $3.00 minus the Jack Fruit (the big thing at the top); I don't remember what the price was on it.

A couple of suggestions when buying food from the market:

• Once it's home, scrub off any loose dirt and wash them after that.  There are "professional" fruit cleaning products (like Vitalin), but a quarter-cup of vinegar in a sink full of water also does the trick (like in the fruit picture above).  Soak for twenty minutes, dry off and put them in the fridge.
• The fish guys will clean and cut your fish however you like (filets or steaks) at no additional charge.  Most fish sold at the market was caught either that morning or during the previous night.
• Buy meat early in the day!  The beef and fish booths close at noon; chickens are sold until late afternoon.  The other motivation for this is that it sits (or hangs) in the open air during the day until it is sold and replaced with new product from the refrigerator.
• I've stopped buying cuts of beef (other than hamburger).  The beef is cut with the grain, not across it, and this creates a pretty tough steak.
• When buying fruits or vegetables, don't ask for "four potatoes" or "a dozen limes".  Instead, ask for "fifty cents of potatoes" or "ten cents of parsley".  The quantities will generally be larger and it's easier for the vendor to make a running tab of what he's selling.
• Unlike whole chickens at a store, chickens at the market don't come with all of the "parts" (innards, the head and the feet); they're sold separately.  Keep this in mind if you're making chicken stock after the chicken has been roasted.  (Whole chickens at the market are $1.00/lb and average about six pounds.)

Bon appetit!

Living in Puerto Lopez: Overview

Six months in!  After three months in Guayaquil and nine months in San Jose, Emily and I have spent the last six months living in Puerto Lopez.  One of our goals was to see if we could live exclusively in a small coastal town in Ecuador, and so far we've been successful.  Major purchases, such as vehicles and appliances are better purchased in the larger cities, but daily life has been fairly simple once we started exploring and embracing the town and the people here.

(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!

Losing a friend...

My friend, Bob Fountaine, passed away Sunday night.

He had been in a motorcycle accident last Wednesday and died from the complications of that accident.  He was only 58 years old.


It takes a certain, off-the-beaten-track kind of person to leave behind the comforts of one's home and to establish a new lifestyle in a foreign country.  I have had the pleasure to personally get to know about fifty expatriates that have chosen the challenge of moving to Ecuador, and there are not many that have done it better than Bob did.

Leaving behind a successful career as a senior executive, Bob, his wife Michelle, and their two children took that chance.  Together, they made the move and established themselves in San Jose.  They built a house for themselves and became a presence in their community.

Bob went on to build and operate a gym in Montanita.  He employed members of the community to help him run the business to supply them with jobs and income.  The business is very successful and recently needed to add a second story for yoga and other fitness classes.

The finest attribute about Bob, however, was his character.  Despite his large size (I think he was about 6'5) and intimidating build, he was one of the kindest and most caring persons I have ever met.  He was always quick with a joke, generous to a fault, and I can't recall him ever speaking negatively about another person.  The first time I met and talked with him, I knew that I could always rely and confide in him.

Goodbye, my friend.  Our entire community misses you.

Movin' on up (the coast)

Most of my posts have revolved around specific events or incidents that have taken place during our time here in Ecuador.  There haven't been too many of those lately, so I haven't created a new blog post in a while.  My apologizes for that.

Having said that, there are three events that have occurred recently that are worth mentioning.


We've Moved to Puerto Lopez

Next week, we're hoping to begin work on our Machalilla property, and living in San Jose was just too much of a commute to make living there effective.  We loved the casita we were living in, and we'll miss spending day-to-day interactions with our hosts there, but this is a more practical location.

On the first map below, (C) is where we were previously (San Jose), (B) is where we are now (Puerto Lopez) and (A) is where our property is located (Machalilla):







The drive from San Jose to Puerto Lopez is about 45 minutes, including a really gnarly trip through the Machalilla forest with 200 foot drop-offs and no guardrails.  When we drive through that stretch, we're looking down at the tree-tops below us.

(Machalilla is both a town and a national park.  You can read more about the park here: http://www.machalillanationalpark.com/machalilla_national_park.shtml)

Living in Puerto Lopez also means a change in shopping.  There is a great Mercado in town for fruit and vegetables, but there are only two CPG stores (Consumer Packaged Goods - my work at Siebel Systems stiill sticks with me) of merit for buying household items (TIA and a tienda), and they are very over-priced.  When we lived in San Jose, we'd make a monthly drive to La Libertad/Salinas for shopping; now, we'll be going to Portoviejo, about two hours away:







(Manta is also an option, but it also has one of those gnarly ridge roads that I would prefer to avoid.  I must be getting soft.)

It's a pretty simple drive except for the part between the coast and Jipijapa.  The road climbs from sea level to about 2000 feet, and it's usually fogged in on our return trip.

Puerto Lopez is a very scenic town with a population of about 12,000.  Here's a view of the town from one of the surrounding hills:

Living here is closer to Ecuadorian living than living along the Olón beach:

• There are very few other expats here, maybe fifty.  This gives us a chance to interact with more of the locals and to get to know them.
• Puerto Lopez uses the epitome of "Coastal Spanish".  Not only do we need to improve our Spanish, we need to learn to how to hear it here.  At a tienda the other day, I bought a bottle of soda for $1.50.  On the coast, the last letter or syllable of a word is frequently truncated; instead of saying "dos cinquenta" (one fifty), the vendor simply said, "do cinquen".
• There is no garbage collection at our place (we burn our trash), but there is a very active recycling program.
• We walk into town for our errands.  (That's mostly true; I still drive when we make our water and beer runs.)  In San Jose, it used to take us over an hour to walk to Olón; here, we can get to almost any point in twenty minutes.
• Our favorite restaurant, Patacon Pisa'o, is also here.  The proprietor, Jaibel, is originally from Colombia; here, he is celebrating Colombia's win during the first knock-out match of the World Cup:

Machalilla is just ten minutes from here - much more accessible!


New Critters

We've adopted two new cats!  The entire litter was rescued when their mother was hit by a car just a couple weeks into their new lives.  Since we adopted them on the day of the lunar eclipse (April 15th), we've decided to name them Luna and Sol.  I think the picture will explain which one is which:

We also have a stray puppy that has adopted us:

I've named her "Dobby" because she looks just the like character from the Harry Potter movies.  Unfortunately, I don't know if she'll make it for long.  In addition to being completely emaciated, she was covered with hundreds of ticks and fleas, and she has many open wounds that are constantly being picked at and reopened.  We're feeding her and giving her flea baths, and we hope she recovers.  She spends most of the day curled up in that washpan; I think it's the first time she's felt "safe" in her life.

We no longer have iguanas roaming the property like we had in San Jose:

but we do have little four-inch geckos that crawl on the ceiling of our deck.  They're mostly a minor nuisance; they come out at night and croak a lot, but that's about it.



There are also the other occasional visitors.  I'm guessing this guy thinks my name is Peter Parker:

A Property Transaction that Proved Unworkable (so far)


Our current plan is to use the Machalilla properties as a project of sorts.  We'll use the two lots to understand all aspects of local construction, everything from leveling the lot and establishing boundaries to acquiring materials and paying workers.  We're still looking for our "destination" property, and we thought that we had found it.  So far, though, it hasn't worked out.

This is a simplistic explanation of the problem that we've encountered.  (It would take a month of Sundays to provide the full explanation.)  A landowner had a multiple-hectare property located on the beach between here and Manta.  He had divided it into multiple parcels prior to 1991 and started to sell them.  This is an example of how the properties were laid out:



This was the plot map that was registered with the Municipio in Jipijapa in 1991.  After some thought, however, the seller realized that he could make more money by re-parceling the property to move the Comuna Land (community property) inland and move the private parcels to the beach.  This is the new designation of the lot boundaries:



All of the escrituras (titles) reflect the new boundaries, and apparently a new plot map was registered with the Municipio in 1998.  However, no one at the municipal building can find that map.  This is the only one they have to work from:

(Yes, it is torn in many places and held together with cellophane tape.)

We could purchase the property and know its dimensions, but we wouldn't know exactly where it's located.  That would prevent us from building fences or getting permits to build any structures on the property.  Until the Municipio does a formal survey that correlates the plot map to the escrituras, we're not moving forward.


That's it for now - more updates to come as we start our new development in Machalilla!