The biggest danger you face in Ecuador…

BAM!!

“What the f@ck was that,” I thought as I sat up in bed.

The noise woke me up.

BAM!!

There it was again, sounded like a gun shot, in my house!

Now, I was really worried.

You see, I was a new arrival immigrant in Ecuador, three plus years ago, with no money and just a carry-on full of belongings, staying in a run-down student housing building on the ghetto south-side of the “Centro” of Guayaquil.

My only furniture was a little-box-bed I was sleeping on.

I was new, I didn’t know that this was NOT a good place to live, especially for a foreigner.

So…

I opened my bedroom door and still rubbing my eyes walked out through the hallway past the other students rooms and into the main area at the front of the house where I saw a gardener working.

“Buenos dias, boss” the gardener said.

I waved and went back to bed.

Later that morning I got a powerful knock on the door, it was another student that was in the building.

“Dude, we’ve been robbed!” He proclaimed.

“What?!?” I was shocked, remember, I was a newbie North American in Ecuadorian student housing. Afterall, this stuff never happened in the cushy suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio where I was born and raised.

We went to his room where it had been ransacked, along with the neighbor, and examening closely my door, it had been broke too, the noise I heard was the burglar trying to kick in my door, twice!

Thankfully, it was a solid wooden door cause if he would have got in and saw me there, it would’ve been two caged rats, only one getting out alive.

And then it hit me, the “gardener” was the burglar, he didn’t have time to get out when I came out and faked it, boy did I feel stupid when I told the other students.

He thought on a holiday weekend a student housing complex would be empty, well, I having no family in Ecuador had no where else to go and was there.

The next day I was out of there, moving to a nicer part of Guayaquil.

You see, the biggest danger you’ll face in Ecuador is from break ins, and yes, Ecuadorians already know this and take measures to prevent against it.

For instance, they put up big walls around the property, live in gated communities, put ghetto glass on the tops of the walls, get big dogs, even let poor local families live on their property so it’s not so vacant.

Usually, robbers in Ecuador will only go for a house that is OBVIOUSLY vacant.

Know this and take it into account before you buy or rent in Ecuador, how’s the security of the house/condo?