My friend, American expat Edd Staton who lives in Cuenca, Ecuador wrote this neat post today
on his blog. I have posted it at the very bottom of this post…
The Beautiful Architecture in Cuenca, Ecuador
By Dr. Michael Quadlander…
As some of you may know, I plan to move to Cuenca sometime this year.
It is the 3rd largest city in Ecuador, population 500,000.
About 3,000 U.S. Americans live there now.
I can continue to practice part-time as a Chiropractor there.
However, my main business focus will be to start-up an Online Web Services company
to serve various clients back in the U.S.
Just like outsourcing to India, Pakistan, Romania, and the Philippines.
I have hired outsourcers in all of these countries in the past.
The Philippinos are great, but the rest pretty much suck in doing a good job…
That is just my experience, but one that is oft repeated when hiring overseas outsourcers.
I plan to live in Cuenca, and personally train my employees there in the service skills
they need to learn. Then hire a local manager to run the office.
Back View of my future office in Cuenca, Ecuador 
Good starting salaries in Ecuador are $2 per hour !
Maybe $4 per hour on the high side for super employees.
I will only charge clients in the U.S. $8 to $10 per hour, which is
very cheap for Online Marketing and Website Management services.
That will keep demand for my services very high…
I keep the difference, maybe about $3 to $4 per hour.
With 10 employees, built up over several months, that
is $30 to $40 per hour to me as the Owner.
About $5,000 per month, in Ecuador… which is equivalent to about
$15,000 to $18,000 a month in the U.S.
You see, the cost of living in Ecuador is about 25 to 35 cents on the dollar,
compared to the U.S. !
And only about 10 cents on the dollar for similar quality health care !!!
You can survive on $1,000 month, but only $3,000 per month
provides a high quality of life in Cuenca.
Modern three bedroom, three bath, high-speed Internet, satellite TV so
you get the U.S. English stations, ESPN, etc…
All included utilities, transportation, great food, and you can eat out
in the restaurants 5 to 7 nights a week.
For only $3,000 a month ! And that is for 2 adults and 1 child !
To kinda paraphrase Tim Robbins in the Shawshank Redemption classic movie,
“Get busy making a LOT More Money to live in the U.S., or get busy finding
someplace with a high-quality / low-cost of living…”
The Beautiful Rolling Hills and Mountains of Ecuador
It is a Cash Society, which keeps everything very low cost.
There are ATM machines, however, so you CAN use your bank card
to withdraw necessary cash each day.
Both local bank cards, and U.S. based bank cards work just fine.
Their official national currency IS the U.S. dollar. That is cool…
No overnight devaluations, losing thousands of dollars overnight.
That happened to me twice with the Mexican Peso when I lived in
Cancun, Mexico in 1981 and 1982 ! Ouch…
With a hired manager, I will have mostly Free Time.
Siesta Time in Cuenca, Ecuador... zzzzzz...
Using Manage by Statistics methods, I can keep track of what is going on, even when
I spend time back in the States.
Round-trip flights from Ecuador to the States are about $1,000…
Anyway, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it… as Dennis Miller of SNL used to say !
Dr. Q…
________________________________________________________________________
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
The Day the Earth Stood Still - by Edd Staton in Cuenca, Ecuador…
Edd and Cynthia Horsin' Around in Cuenca, Ecuador
It was a scary night but we obviously survived. The next morning I walked around to assess the damage and retrieve our car which I had parked in a garage in case the streets flooded. It was an amazingly eerie feeling to stroll through what in one day had become a ghost town. All the doors and windows were boarded up and the vast majority of the population had fled. There were no cars, no pedestrians. And the silence was remarkable.
I haven’t thought about that day in a long time, but today walking to the Supermaxi the memory came rushing back. Because today Cuenca is also a virtual ghost town.
It is Carnaval here, and today is the final day of a four day celebration leading up to Ash Wednesday. Everyone who can has left the city to celebrate at the coast or family places in the country. Almost every shop and restaurant is closed.
As I write this I am looking out the window onto Avenida Paucarbamba, our main thoroughfare. There is not one moving vehicle or pedestrian in sight on what is normally a bustling Tuesday afternoon. As I walked to the store earlier I was struck with the recognition of that same weird silence I experienced in Charleston in 1999. I heard no car alarms because there were no cars in use. No dogs were barking since there were no people walking by to provoke them (I’ve taken this route enough to know which houses to avoid).
There is a taxi stand outside the grocery store. Waiting with shopping bags was a woman and her child. No taxis. It suddenly struck me that I hadn’t seen a single cab on my walk, which is highly unusual. Uh-oh. I had a long list in my pocket that included frozen items. What to do?
I sat outside a few minutes to assess my situation. A lot of times we all “go with the flow” here, but today there was no more than a “drip” to go with(which was what my ice cream and bag of ice purchases were going to be doing if I didn’t be proactive and come up with a plan). Although the lady was having no luck at the taxi station I observed a couple of cabs go by a half block away on a perpendicular street. Armed with this nugget of reconnaissance I decided to take my chances and go for it.
Inside the Supermaxi I met some blog fans who have just arrived in town. They’re staying in a hotel nearby and were checking out the store since everything else was closed. I offered to have them accompany me up and down the aisles so I could show them some of the things we’ve learned the hard way through trial and error over this past year. Longtime readers know I’ve experienced many misadventures within those walls.
After we parted and I paid the bill I had the bag boy stay with the groceries at the stand while I jogged up to the corner. Sure enough I immediately flagged a taxi and signaled him to drive around the block and pick me and my bags up. When my new friends emerged and saw us loading the trunk they said, “Wow, you were lucky!” No, sometimes you have to create your luck.
It is 3 PM now and I’m starting to see a slow trickle of cars on the street. Our citizens are returning and Cuenca is coming back to life. Tomorrow morning the buses, car alarms, honking horns, and barking dogs will all be back on duty. The peace and quiet has been a delightful holiday of its own for those few of us who remained in town.
