I’ve had enough time to wonder around Quito and get a grasp of the cost of living. I reside in the historic center of Quito (Old Town, El Centro) on what turns out to be an inexpensive working class street.
All of the Old Town is an Unesco World Heritage Site, and a great place to be alive.
If I hang out in gringo bars of the Mariscal Sucre, the traveler’s ghetto or “gringolandia” as some locals call it, it costs gringo dollars (American dive bar prices) but if I stay away from touristy or major hubs the everyday working class prices are as follows:
Hotel Room – $165 per month. See my Quito for Expats post for pictures of my room.
Large beer from bodega – .80 cents. The national beer is called “Pilsner,” guess what kind of beer it is.
Internet – free with room but faster at Internet café .70 cents per hour. It’s high-speed.
Lunch & Dinner – $1.50 a piece. Nothing scary, I promise. They know bananas, and fruit juices. Order what ever you want or you can get the set menu for lunch or dinner, it’s like their special, or a lunch or dinner of the day sort of thing. Multicourse and good.
Laundry – $1 a kilo for someone else to do it.
Public Bus – .20 cents, years ago when I was in Quito it was full of pickpockets. I don’t know about now, they’ve cleaned up the city.
Taxi – $4 bucks from the old town to the new town, almost as far as you would want to go, not including the airport which cost $8.
Things like shampoo – if imported same price, maybe not San Francisco, California bodega prices, but certainly supercenter or target prices.
5 liter bottle of mineral water – $1.10
3 liter bottle of coca cola zero – $1.50
Bootlegged DVD – $1 Bootlegged DVDs are everywhere.
Private Spanish tutor – $4 bucks per hour
Touring churches and museums – approximately $1-3 depending.
Salsa Club with live music – all different of course, but one I like in the Mariscal Sucre is $6 bucks and includes one drink, $2.50 a drink after the first one, Salsa lessons from women who know how to wear high-heels free.
I guess I should say the National Currency of Ecuador is the United States Dollar. They no longer have their own currency, inflation was at 60% and in the year 2000 they decided to abandon their currency for the US Greenback.
This is good for Americans because while the US dollar is losing strength in the rest of the world, Ecuador is pegged to us, that, and you don’t have to change money at the airport.
