Why Ecuador?
- Darlene Blackett
- Jan 15, 2022
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 26
As I look outside at all the beautiful plants and flowers, the ocean, the mountains, the birds, butterflies and geckos surrounding our home, I can’t help but feel mountains of gratitude for the life we have created. Years ago my husband John and I set a goal, one which we worked towards with determination, perseverance, and faith.
25 years ago, John and I started searching for the ideal retirement haven, even though we weren’t ready to retire. We traveled to many countries that were deemed to be beautiful tropical oases. Many of them were, but in doing our research, we developed a checklist of criteria that we wanted to meet in order for us to invest in an escape from the frigid Western Canadian winters. It took us a lot of years, many travel miles, and even more research to stumble onto a country that resonated with us. That country was Ecuador.
Fast forward to 2010. John and I decided to take a cruise to the Galapagos, then go on real estate tours all over the country in order to see and feel the different areas of the country. We liked each place we toured, but fell in love with the Ecuadorian coast. Bahía de Caráquez, which was a nice town with some infrastructure and a lot of possibilities for growth and development, was our choice. We ended up buying a condo in an unbuilt building, which in retrospect was a huge leap of faith, but with the promise of being able to design our own spacious open concept dream home that overlooked the Pacific Ocean as well as the Chone River. That was 11 years ago. Bahía had some smaller hardware and grocery stores, and a wonderful “mercado” with a plethora of colourful fruits and vegetables, fish, seafood, chicken, cheese, eggs, bread. But when it came to buying things like air conditioning units, ceiling fans, decent light fixtures and other such things, we would hire a driver to take us to Manta or Portoviejo which were each about an hour and a half away. If one of the cities didn’t have what we needed, the driver would take us to the other city. We would leave early in the morning, and return after dark at night, exhausted and frustrated with the lack of products and materials we were used to in Canada. Nice things that were imported were expensive yet the beautiful fresh fruits, vegetables, seafood, chicken were extremely underpriced and bountiful.
