Before I started off on my first real trip out of the country – a college trip to Mexico in 1997 – our Spanish instructor gave us a little mental exercise in preparation for one of the essays we’d eventually be required to write.  He asked us to take a few minutes to examine our preconceptions about the country we were about to visit so that we could see how well they matched up with reality.

Of course, we can’t help but do that when we travel, but turning it into a conscious effort allows us to see things that we wouldn’t otherwise.

Our recent trip through Peru last month was my fourth time in the country.  With the exception of trekking in Colca Canyon, all the places Oksana and I visited were the same old places I’d been before.  Trying to remember my original preconceptions of the country was futile; for the most part, I knew exactly what to expect.

Still, traveling with Oksana (on her first trip to Peru) allowed me to see the country through her eyes.  I jotted down some notes, as I often do, about how Peru can be different from what you may expect.
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The first time I visited Ecuador was at the end of 1998. I’ve been back twice since then; once at the tail end of 2009 and again at the end of 2010.  Not being very familiar with the country makes it pretty difficult to spot the changes over that timeframe (I noticed a few), but it’s fairly easy to pick out the differences between Ecuador and the United States.

Here are some of the little things I noticed:

Economy and Prices

One of the ways to gauge how inexpensive it will be to travel through a foreign country is to look at the exchange rate.  Generally speaking, if one of your dollars buys a whole bunch of their currency, you can expect that your stay won’t cost you very much.  That used to be true in Ecuador.  When I first arrived in 1998, one US dollar bought about 6,000 sucres.  By the time we left Ecuador, three months later, that same dollar gave us 13,000 sucres.  Their economy was tanking.

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