THE HIGH COST OF LOW LIVING
Bahía de Caráquez, Ecuador, 07 August 2007

At the risk of belabouring points that I have made in earlier blogs, I wanted to give a “fersample” of the new and changed situation here for the benefit of other cruisers (so skip this if you are not interested in cruising to Ecuador).

A few days ago a solo world cruiser dropped anchor in Bahia. Aged about 40, he has been cruising for ten years now and has already been around the world once and is now on his second circumnavigation. In other words, he has seen some countries and ports. He had actually visited Ecuador on his first time through and was looking forward to touring some more to the Andes and the Amazonas as well as working on his boat a bit.

He arrived off Bahía last weekend from Panama without being fully aware of the new regime requiring a cruising permit in advance and an agent to handle the work. In radio contact with Puerto Amistad from slightly offshore – Puerto Amistad was arranging the river-bar pilot; Tripp Martin at Puerto Amistad is now a fully qualified agent in the eyes of the Armada del Ecuador - our intrepid mariner was not totally astounded to hear that he would have to hire an agent to enter Bahia harbour. He had, after all, already made a rest stop up the coast at Esmeralda, a big tanker and refining centre. The Capitania de Puerto there told him he could stay in Esmeraldas if he went through an agent. The agent wanted US$1,000. No agent, no entrada. The Port Captain gave him 12 hours to clear out, which was later reduced to about half.

Very irritated, he overcame his exhaustion and sailed on down to Bahía. Here he was just as chagrined to discover that he was now going to have pay US$150 to use the sole agent in town, i.e., Tripp Martin of Puerto Amistad. Tripp does not do the immigration or customs paperwork (Aduana has never till now, at least, been an issue in Bahía because there is no Customs post here). Here the agent gets you your permiso before you enter territorial waters, organises the optional river-bar pilot and does the paperwork with the local Capitania de Peurto, something that in the past took half an hour, cost twenty or thirty dollars and was done by the cruisers themselves. Cruisers now still have to pay the pilot and Port Captain fees in addition to the agent’s charges. And, cruisers still have to get over to Manta to clear Immigration: it’s $6 round trip by “chicken bus” (it stops right in front of Immigration) or you can hire a cab with two or three other cruisers for $30 or $35 for the day. That allows you to do a bit of provisioning at a larger supermarket in Manta or pick up bottom paint or find a big hardware store.

By the time he was settled in Bahía, the solo cruiser's pockets were feeling a lot emptier. The cost breakdown so far was as follows:

$150 – agent (covers entry and a subsequent exit but for Bahía harbour only)
30 – Port Captain fees (including Lights & Buoys fee)
30 – River-bar pilot
15 – Immigration check-in at Manta
10 – Shared taxi to Manta
$235 – TOTAL

He had perhaps the cold comfort of knowing that he was the first boat to enter Bahia using the new local agent. He is not on the other hand comforted to know that it will cost him another nearly $100 to get out when he leaves in about two months for French Polynesia. But at least he won’t have to pay the agent again. He was totally surprised at the excessiveness of the expense, having never run across anything like it just to get into a harbour. “I thought Ecuador was supposed to be cheap! Have they lost their minds?”

He was also unaware that there are alternatives to anchoring and mooring at Puerto Amistad. The Bahia Yacht Club, for example, has generaly till now been much cheaper ($5 for the dock or $1 a day for dinghy docking - both with club usage). One other recent alternative is farther up river and out of town where it costs $150 monthly to moor. Of course, you probably won't know about these till you get settled as the pilot normally takes you straight to Puerto Amistad. To be fair, Tripp does a good job of lining up the pilot for you, his facilities are more than just adequate and I suppose there is no law saying he has to point out other "marinas". In his initial discussion with Tripp Martin at Puerto Amistad, it was also suggested that the new arrival should put $100 “on account” for future bar, laundry, bottom-cleaning and other chits. This is the preferred payment method at Puerto Amistad but one is certainly free to operate on a cash/pay-as-you-go basis. By this time, however, the new guy felt he had been pretty well bled out and he moved his boat down to Bahía Yacht Club.

Vilisar has been anchored there for nearly two months while its mast was laid out in the yard there for repairs. The solo sailor knew we were paying $30 monthly for dinghy docking and for the use of the toilets, showers, swimming pool and tennis court. We also told him that the Club had charged us $10 a day for using their sea wall as a makeshift grid and roughly 50 cents a day for laying our mast out in their small "work yard". These extra charges came along after six weeks of being there. But at least they were the final, once-only fees after negotiating them down from a near rip-off level. Anyway, when our new arival went in to Bahia Yacht Club this morning to sign in, so to speak, they wanted to charge him the same prices as Puerto Amistad, i.e. $2 daily for dinghy docking and for the use of the (one) cold-water shower and (one) toilet, neither kept exactly spotless. In shock, he neverthless got them down to $40 a month on a trial basis.

The only things, after all, that the Club has to offer that Puerto Amistad does not are the swimming pool and tennis court and maybe, depending on what stage of your life you are in, the Incredible & Death-Defying Booming Disco Bar on Friday and Saturday and sometimes on other nights (usually till 0400 in the morning). Bring your own ear plugs! The toilets and showers are definitely of a much inferior standard and the techno and Reggaeton are not to everyone’s taste. Of course, at the Club you are right in town, which is nice if you like it. We do.

Bahia and Ecuador! What had once been an interesting and inexpensive place to visit has become interesting but now rather dear. Add to this that there are still quite a number of still-unresolved other issues directly impacting cruisers. Take for example the problem of how to get diesel or gasoline legally at any price, let alone the $1.05 for a 4-litre gallon of diesel and $1.48 for gasoline that is henceforth apparently to be treated as a birthright-price for Ecuadorians only. You can get fuel, poeple tell us: after all, this is Ecuador! But be aware that you are taking part in an illegal activity. And who knows these days if and when the government will crack down. And, don’t forget that Migración, now that it has an all-singing, all-dancing networked-up, nationwide computer network, has become curiously rather arbitrary in the amount of tourist-visa time it permits in the country to boating tourists. We ourselves have received a couple of surprises and expect the possibility of more. At best it is, shall we say, a trifle unpredictable. Bribes are apparently necessary to overcome hurdles. And who knows whether the recent attempt by Aduana (Customs) officers in Salinas to charge at least one foreign boat a 10% import duty because it had been in the country for more than 90 days (sic!) was simply an extortion effort by the local chiefs or the shape of things to come. Either way, it is the pits and it makes some cruisers very nervous. Us included!

Some people pooh-pooh the changes. It is still cheaper here, they say – at least if you anchor – than other international ports-of-call. Local living costs are low and so is the general level of price inflation. But marina costs are sharply on the way up over even two years ago: count on $210 for a mooring buoy in Bahía and $450 and upwards for a berth at Puerto Lucia in Salinas (plus a $200 live-aboard charge there). Apparently, the Bahía Yacht Club also now wants in on the action and is trying to rake in market-leader prices without providing the facilities or services that Tripp at Puerto Amistad does.

There is no justification surely for making expensive agents obligatory for yachts. If they even come to Ecuador now – and we would not recommend it for the moment - hardly any crusing yacht will be able to afford to visit more than one port in the country. Fortunately, I guess, long-distance bus travel in Ecuador remain a bargain and, unless you are a foreign boat, travel prices are generally stable and still low. Spread over a lot of months the government-induced charges levied on foreign boats might appear to melt away, so to speak. But if you are just stopping for six months or less you may now find it expensive. If you want to do your haul-out in Puerto Lucia, Salinas, for example, the labour-cost advantage of having boat work done in Ecuador starts to vanish when you start figuring in the new government, yard and marina charges. Given the uncertainties and vagaries of Customs, Immigration and fuel availability, visiting cruising boats are not likely to feel totally welcome here.

I wonder why the new government expects demand for visitor permits to The Gelapagos will go down if the prices are raised sharply (that is the government's market-oriented approach to reducing visitors to eco-sensitive Galapagos) but fails to understand that the same might happen to the boat-borne tourist trade when prices shoot up on the mainland too.