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I'm going to Cuenca 4/14/2020 for a week. There's a bar called INCA bar and restaurant that I'll meet up with some unknown expats and try to get info.

Congratulations, Eva. Ecuador isn't a very big country--you can fly the length of it in an hour, or ride the bus from one end to the other in about ten hours. Entry points are Quito in the north (waaaay up in the Andes), and Guayaquil in the southwest (Pacific sea level).

No vaccinations are required. Esmeraldas is the only canton with cautionary notes from the state department, as is twenty miles south of the Colombia border. Otherwise, the country is fairly safe for tourists.

You get a ninety day tourist visa stamped on your passport at the airport customs. Health insurance is required for the duration of your visit. A return ticket is also required.

Jet Blue is best and has the lowest rates to fly. Latam Airlines and TAME are the major carriers inside Ecuador. Buses and taxis are cheap and mostly dependable and safe.

Your cards are useful to access "cajeros" (bank-in-the-box) for cash. Most businesses won't take debit/credit cards. Good for you because there's like a $5 fee for every use. Don't give your card to anyone unless you are right there! Best to withdraw a large enough amount of cash to last you for a few days. U.S. dollar replaced the sucre as currency since 2012.

Booking.com always worked for me in finding reasonable lodging, but I'm not a single woman.

Quito, Cuenca, Salinas, and Manta are cities with fairly large expat communities. If you hang out on this site, somebody else will help you out.

Felicidades, y buen viaje!
Buster (Emigrayo68)

Thank you Buster I appreciate the info.

paulk2038 wrote:

I'm going to Cuenca 4/14/2020 for a week. There's a bar called INCA bar and restaurant that I'll meet up with some unknown expats and try to get info.

hanks,

Thanks, I will keep this in mind in case I happen to be there

As for tickets, I'd also keep a google flights search open... Many smaller airports aren't even listed on Skyscanner (but they are on Google).  Or even when they are on Skyscanner, it doesn't have any prices listed.  I saved $300 / 8 hours of driving by finding a flight that landed half an hour from my old home town but that wasn't listed on any airline's website.

When you say I need health insurance for my week long trip to Quenca are we talking about trip insurance? I have insurance thru my company if I was on company business which I won't be.

No required vaccinations. However the CDC has a list of recommendations, which I followed and feel safer for it.

antialiased wrote:

As for tickets, I'd also keep a google flights search open... Many smaller airports aren't even listed on Skyscanner (but they are on Google).  Or even when they are on Skyscanner, it doesn't have any prices listed.  I saved $300 / 8 hours of driving by finding a flight that landed half an hour from my old home town but that wasn't listed on any airline's website.

Thanks for the tip. Is there a way to search without entering dates so you can choose the least expensive?

You can't search without entering dates, because the cost of flights almost always varies depending on the date and thus the demand - for instance around Christmas the price will go up.  The only exceptions may be short hops, say, to an island from a mainland, but even those are often subject to vary by date.

OsageArcher wrote:

You can't search without entering dates, because the cost of flights almost always varies depending on the date and thus the demand - for instance around Christmas the price will go up.  The only exceptions may be short hops, say, to an island from a mainland, but even those are often subject to vary by date.

Skyscanner used to have it. You could see the price for every day. Unfortunately, they either stopped that feature or I have forgotten how to search for it.

This is how you search to find the cheapest flight for the whole month.



But I remember seeing the price for every single day. Maybe it was a different search engine.... Don't know.

EveeZee wrote:

Thanks for the tip. Is there a way to search without entering dates so you can choose the least expensive?

You have to start with a date, but google has both a chart and graph view where you can see when the prices are lower/higher.