Hello friends,
It's been a while. We have decided to take the leap and retire in Ecuador. Once the decision was made, the first step is to get temporary resident visa.
We did a lot of research online, we talked to friends, we even consulted with a couple of lawyers. In the end, what happened was a combination of everything we researched, plus Murphy's Law, plus one actual good thing about cultural differences.
Sooo, when you see what the application entails for a pensioner's visa, it looks super easy. 'They' tell you that all you need is a couple copies of your passport, a background check (who knows if it needs to be clean or not), and a bank statement showing you have a certain amount of cash money or a pension letter or some official statement saying that you have a monthly income of $800/month or more. Easy enough...
We had a feeling it would be more complicated than that. I knew that I would need to find my marriage license to come as a dependent, even though we didn't know where in the process that would be requested. So the first step was to find my marriage license. Check.
We got a letter from the pension people at my husband's former employer - check
Background check from the county sheriff - check
Passports - obviously - Check, check, check.
We were then informed that everything had to be officially translated. What is that? We asked our Spanish teacher if she could do it, no go, she said any old person couldn't do it. We walked around the corner to the place where they send money to Mexico, sell plane tickets to people who want to travel home to Latin America, and where they translate letters to English from Spanish, hoping they could do the same for us. They were not nice and didn't give us an idea of the cost. We also asked about the Apostille. They said we had to go to downtown San Diego for that. ok
To be continued...
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