OMGosh...An Update on Our Family and Wow...We Finally Have Our Ecuador Visa's and Cedula's :)

After we were living in Hernando, Florida for a while we debated the desire to relocate to Oregon or Washington State.  After looking for rural rental property prices in those states we decided to look a bit further.  To other countries.  We wanted to go to Europe so we could more easily see other countries on vacations.  But the prices were more than we wanted to spend, they would leave very little money for traveling.  And the immigration system seemed daunting.

We discussed different countries in Latin America next.  Most of the countries we looked at that were affordable were very dangerous or were unstable.  We don't really care about politics, we looked more at the economic viability and stability.  Ecuador stood out as an excellent place that was improving its infrastructure, was friendly to gringos (all expats) they had clearly detailed the hoops we would have to jump through but the immigration process was straight forward.

We then entered our educational phase of moving to a new country.  Just about every online blog, website, and forum was browsed.  We spent countless hours getting information and taking notes. This was the most beneficial thing we did.  When we finally moved, we were better informed and prepared for things that happened.

We worked hard to get all new documents of everything we needed to obtain for our Visa's.  Birth certificates, marriage certificate and in my case my divorce from my first wife.  We contacted a facilitator who assists Gringo's in doing the Visa process.  It was difficult to do on our own according to this company's web site and we believed it.  We learned much later on that it is not difficult but we will get to that…

We sent off our paperwork six months prior to leaving the US and we were assured we could have our Visa's prior to leaving the US.  That was a big relief for all of us so we paid and began the process.  I won't say more other than we ended up coming to Ecuador without the Visa's.  Its been six months now and we finally sorted out the mess here in Cuenca "Not Quito" once we arrived.  Within the past two weeks we have each gotten our Visa's and our Cedula's (Ecuador National ID Card.)  We came to Ecuador with 3 people,  2 dogs, and 21 pieces of luggage.  We brought mostly clothing since  we knew clothing in gringo sizes don't exist here.  We brought computers and Kindle Fire HD's, as well.  And lots of Christmas crafting stuff for the ladies to occupy their time.

We arrived in Ecuador at 3:30am and had to travel from Guayaquil to Cuenca.  We were introduced to the driving style and it's perils on the way.  We resided in a hotel that had dog friendly apartments for around two weeks until we found a 3 bedroom 2 bath apartment in a relatively quiet area of Cuenca. 

That apartment didn’t work out well for us.  Therefore, it was time hunt again and after looking for quite some time we found a rural home in Cumbe, Ecuador that fit us perfectly.  The landlords are like family.  They are genuine and very helpful.  We had to ask a good friend to help us out during the negotiations as our Spanish is still limited.  Soledad Gould is not only a good friend, she made sure that everything we and the landlord wanted in the agreement was fair and legal for both sides.  We all can't say enough good stuff about her.

After moving into the house and looking at the fields around the home it became very clear that we would have mice attempting to enter the home as soon as the harvest happened.  We were right!  I found 3 mice in the house and managed to kill all of them with a flip flop.  So off to the mercardo we went to get some gato's (cats.)  We got two females Luna and Molly Moo Moo, they are becoming used to the dogs.  We also knew of a puppy that mama and Heather really wanted. We had talked about getting a new  puppy in a while but, this is Ecuador.  When you come across what you want we have learned to go for it since we know that when you want it later it will not be there.  Thus entered a new puppy Isabella "Bella"...at the same time as the cats.  It's a bit of a zoo here right now but the house is huge and the animals all have plenty of room to play and lots of love.  For us its been great and a lot of fun.

Also, we managed in the past two weeks to finish the Visa/Cedula process on our own.  It was not as easy as we might have wished for but I can say that with the proper paperwork and a bit of patience its not that hard to figure out.  I wanted to mention we did ask some questions and got some advice from Dana Cameron.  She was honest, even brutally honest.  And when you need to know the truth that is very valuable.  Her advice was spot on and she was very knowledgeable of the whole Visa process.  No fear tactics, no lies, or BS.  She even offered to come to Cuenca or go to Quito to help us if we could not figure things out on our own. Thankfully, we didn't need to.

My advice to folks coming to Ecuador:  Do not pay for your visa prior to coming to Ecuador.  Take the time to get the paperwork done in the US prior to coming.  That way you have the papers.  You will take better care of them and not lose anything.  If you follow the rules and do things right then you know its done correctly. You will not have to rely on someone else telling you lies, doing the paperwork wrong, or endangering your application process.  Its a lot of money being asked for to do something you can accomplish easily on your own.  It really is not that hard.  Save the money you would spend on this for a nice vacation.  The more people that buy into the idea that they can and will get the visa prior to coming, the richer the companies that do this get and believe me, you still end up paying the same fee's despite hiring a company to help. It's called getting Gringo-ed for a reason.