Starting out

I realize I posted this but didn't ask any questions! Are there any people on the coast who would be interested in sharing their experiences in person over dinner? There are a lot of posts on this forum about retiring in Ecuador, but there aren't many about younger people moving. Aside from the advice from cccm regarding the top 5 rules of moving to a new country, what are some of the mistakes that some of you made that you would change if you could go back and do it all again?

CJ

I will be moving to Canoa but I am older. Misha16 lives in Bahia and he was very helpful to me. I think he is younger. I will try to answer your questions but others might have more information.

Dustee wrote:

I realize I posted this but didn't ask any questions! Are there any people on the coast who would be interested in sharing their experiences in person over dinner? There are a lot of posts on this forum about retiring in Ecuador, but there aren't many about younger people moving. Aside from the advice from cccm regarding the top 5 rules of moving to a new country, what are some of the mistakes that some of you made that you would change if you could go back and do it all again?

CJ

It’s probably helpful to read online info on why some expats left Ecuador. Those reasons may give insight on how to better approach life here. The main reasons often given on why expats leave are:

Language difficulty
Culture
Missing home (people, things, familiarity, etc)

Basically, not fitting in.

I’ll address the first challenge in this post, language. Don’t underestimate the effort and time it will take to learn Spanish. Recently, I read about a couple that returned home primarily because of language and not fitting in. They (couple in early 50s) claimed that they put in the effort and even took courses but were not able to grasp it.

Understand that Spanish is a serious and expansive language and will take more than a year to learn. This doesn’t matter if you’re 40 or 70. It will take serious effort, time and a lot of conversation time.

Yeah, you’re not going to get it in a year so when those doubts creep in, that it’s not possible, keep moving forward.

re Montanita. I lived there for a few years.

Are you closer to 30 or 40?
Do you have kids?

It is a party town, so you can expect to be surrounded by sex drugs and rock'n'roll (well reggaeton and house music) 24x7 during high season.  Hostal / campsites and the main places in town will keep it thumping until 4am and hostals may keep it going later and start again in the morning over weekends.

If you have kids, the primary schools are fine, there is a nursery school over in Olon with lots of foreigner / ex pat kids. Mostly it is under 5s, but there are a handful older, but is by no means a school school.

Secondary schooling, is lacking. Your options are the local schools, which is alright, but does lacking in many areas. So you are now going to have to send them to Salinas (90 minute journey for 7am start) or home school.

Be prepared for the weather as well. There are two seasons. Winter (your summer) which is hot, rains fairly often in the night usually nothing to heavy / torrential, but you may get 1-2 weeks of heavy rain. Then you get low season, where the sun tends to go into hibernation behind low cloud around June / July and stays there until December. It will also drizzle rain, for large portions of that. It's cold and miserable (ok not cold cold, but not beach weather).

Montanita also has suffered as victim of it's own success, with seemingly unchecked growth without the infrastruture to handle it and keep the place tidy. Olon, the next village along, is seeing a lot of growth with new places opening up, without (yet?) the problems of montanita. Nothing else really further north in Santa Elena, unless you want to be in gated communities / set back from the village in ex pat only development areas, with only very basic village amenties for the locals.

Thank you for the replies so far! Appreciating the information. I really appreciate how there is a lot of information on this site, but also how active and engaging so many people are.

To answer a few of the questions asked:
We are in our Mid 30's (I'm 35, she is 34) and there are no kids. Both of us have been learning to speak Spanish for the last 6 months, and have set, what we think are modest goals of learning it over the next 3 years. I am partially fluent in French as well as English, thanks to French being the second official language of Canada.  Thankfully French and Spanish are a lot alike! 

We have been interested in places that seem less party and more relaxed, so maybe a short visit to Montanita would be good, but I don't think it will be somewhere we would like to end up. Olon, Puerto Lopez, on the middle coast. Maybe Canoa or Jama on the North?

We are currently in Vancouver, BC, so rain, clouds and unpredictable weather are all things we are used to.