Living Abroad: The Adventures of Getting a Driver's License in Ecuador

Hey, Edd here. I want to share with you my recent experience renewing my Ecuador driver’s license.

Those of you who have been following us for a while may be wondering, “Wait a minute. I thought you didn’t have a car. Why in the heck do you need a driver’s license?”

You’re right. We sold Cynthia’s car before moving to Cuenca 14 years ago (I had already sold mine), and used the proceeds to pay for the container that brought our furnishings to Ecuador—a win-win transaction of the highest degree.

Since then we have chosen addresses where we can walk to pretty much everything required for daily life. Currently, within 10 minutes from our home is a supermarket, gym, yoga studio, and a wide choice of dining options.

For any other destinations we take Cuenca's light rail system (17 cents per ride for seniors) or use an app on our phone to summon a taxi (fares from $1.50 to $2.50 depending on the distance). Buses are also available but not as convenient for us.

All of this must sound unbelievable if your life requires getting in a car to go basically everywhere. After describing our lifestyle to a recent podcast host he remarked, “You stroll to the yoga studio, coffee shop, bakeries—it sounds like you two live in Brooklyn!”

Against that backdrop (and, yes, it is a wonderful way to live, especially with our year-round springlike weather), what’s up with having an Ecuador driver’s license and needing to renew it when I don’t drive?

Well, my U.S. license expired years ago, and while I never get behind the wheel in Ecuador, I need a valid license to legally drive and sometimes rent a car in the States.

To get the initial license ten years ago, I had to sit in class all morning for two weeks listening to instruction—in Spanish—about the parts of a car, driving rules and regulations, and safety. Next came a driving test, a check for acceptable vision and hearing, and a few coordination/reflex tests. So far so good.

The grand finale was a multiple choice written exam, with 20 questions taken from 330 possibilities. Again in Spanish. Sixteen correct answers were required to pass and receive a license.

How to handle the language issue if you’re not fluent in Spanish? All the questions are available online, as are practice tests that you can take over and over. If you’re the type who wants to know and understand everything, you can copy & paste the questions and answers into Google Translate.

That’s not me. I simply wanted a new license.

Several patterns quickly became obvious. Certain possible questions were never included, while others showed up pretty much every time. Those were almost certain to be on the test.

Numerous questions had “true,” “false,” or “neither" for answers. In every case except one the correct answer was true, so you simply memorized the false one and otherwise picked “true” without even worrying about what was being asked.

And if an answer was noticeably longer than the other choices, that was always the correct one. These shortcuts made preparation way easier than it would seem. Even though my Spanish was really weak back then, sheer repetition made passing the test a breeze.

Every five years the license must be renewed. For most states in the U.S. this is a simple online procedure. Ecuador, on the other hand, requires you to redo the entire process of acquiring a license except for the actual driving test. I wrote about my initial renewal over 100 blogs ago and love the banner I made for it so much that I’ve reprised it for this one.

Why am I writing about the same thing five years later? Well, because I made the mistake of assuming, as perhaps you have, that it would actually be “the same thing.”

Big mistake. Read on.

I’m not sure if I’ve gotten wiser or lazier, but I no longer am particularly interested in doing everything on my own. While I enjoy planning and organizing our travel, I’m weary of dealing with the bureaucracy here. So I hired my friend Emilio Morocho, owner of Cuenca Car Share, to facilitate the process.

I asked him to make an appointment for me to take the written exam before we went to the States. After checking he reported that none were available within that time frame in Cuenca but there was one more slot in Giron, an hour outside of town, the day before I left.

(Sigh) 🙄. “Book it,” I said.

As before, the first step is returning to my old stomping grounds where I originally got my classroom instruction to retake the vision/hearing and coordination/reflex tests. No problem, I think.

And I’m correct until we get to the final segment. What?!? This wasn’t part of the exam 5 years ago! My palms immediately become sweaty. Why?

Have you ever taken this colorblind test? My panic is due to the fact that, well, I am colorblind. If you’re not, you see numbers within all the circles above. I may or may not see anything but little circles inside of the big circles.

She holds up six. Against all odds I somehow answer the first five correctly. The last one—nothing. I see nothing but little circles.

“Oh, no,” I think. “I’m doomed.” 😩

To my enormous relief, perfection apparently isn’t necessary because I leave with my passing document in hand.

Whew! One hurdle to go—the written exam.

Should be even easier than before, since the complete set of online questions and practice tests I find now has only 154 possibilities instead of 330. After the colorblind scare I’m overly cautious, so I prepare until I could answer the questions correctly in my sleep.

On the appointed day Emilio drives me to the office in Giron, where I check in and I wait for my name to be called.

“There are a lot of people ahead of you. Why don’t you practice the test while we’re sitting here waiting?” he suggests.

“I don’t really need to," I say. "But OK. Pull it up on your phone.”

I look at the first question. I’ve never seen it before. The second one asks the range of acceptable minimum and maximum speeds outside of cities. The test I’ve been taking only asks about the maximum, which is the same for all three possible answers.

Instant panic again. This time on a seismic level. I’m about to go in there and fail my test because the practice exam on Emilio’s phone is totally different from the one I found online.

Just then my name is called. I trudge back to the exam room, certain I will be leaving to visit my family the next day with an expired license. I can’t help out taking the grandchildren to their activities. Go to the gym. Or even drive to the grocery store. What a massive disappointment.

I sit down at the computer prepared for the worst. How horrible is this going to be? Will I get any of them right? The first question is from the practice tests I had studied. What? So is the second. And the third. And…

What Emilio showed me in the waiting room was apparently an outdated version. A wave of relief washes over me as I blow through the twenty questions, receive my new license, and go home elated but spent from the emotional roller coaster I had ridden.

So ends the latest tale involving my Ecuador driver’s license. Maybe by the time the next renewal comes around, I’ll either have no interest in driving anymore, or the long-promised era of self-driving cars will have arrived.

Stay tuned…