Fascinating Facts About Ecuador
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Christina María Aguilera, who is a famous American singer, has Ecuadorian origin.His father was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador.Only 26 years, she has already made a place for herself in the world of American music. Over the last eight years, Christina Aguilera has produced six albums, including “Christina Aguilera” (1999), “Mi Reflejo” (2000), “My Kind of Christmas” (2000), “Just Be Free” (2001), and “Back to Basics” (2006).
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Ecuador has many famous people:Oswaldo Guayasamín (painter), Jorge Icaza Coronel (writer), Jefferson Leonardo Perez Quesada ( olympic sportsperson), Betty Pino (journalist), José Ayala Lasso (ambassador), Diego Cordovez (ambassador), and Galo Plaza Lasso (former secretary of the Organization of American States (O.A.S.).
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Surprisingly,the small country of Ecuador has produced two of the best tennis players in the past century.Pancho Segura was one of the best tennis player in the 1940s and 1950s.Francisco Olegario Segura, best known as “Pancho Sgura”, was born on June 20, 1921, in Guayaquil, Ecuador.Like Guillermo Vilas or José Luis Clerc (Argentina), Raúl Ramírez (Mexico) and Alejandro Olmedo (Peru),Andrés Gómez was also one of the best tennis players in Latin America. Losing only set in four rounds of play, Andrés Gómez eased into the 1990 French Open final against Andre Agassi (United States).He was one of the Third World´s most famous athletes in the 1980s and early 1990s.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Different from Cuba (communist dictatorship) and Venezuela (military dictatorship), Ecuador is a democratic state based on a representative government and the three branches of national power…
DID YOU KNOW THAT…In 1972, Jorge Delgado Panchana, who was born in Guayaquil (Ecuador), became the first Ecuadorian to classify in the finals at the Olympic Games, where he ended fourth in the world in the 200-meter butterfly style competition in Munich, West Germany (currently Germany). Jorge Delgado was one of the best athletes of Latin America in the 20th century.At the 1975 Pan American Games in Mexico City, Mexico, he won the gold medal in the 200-meter freestyle swimming competition. In the 1970s, Jorge Delgado Panchana was coached by Jack Nelson, who was born in the United States.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…The South American country is a popular travel destination.It possesses an exceptionally rich and diverse plant life…Ecuador lends itself to mysticism.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Ecuador has had many famous sportsmen and women in the 20th century: Andres Gómez (tennis), Francisco Segura (tennis), Rolando Vera (track and field), Jorge Delgado Panchana (swimming), José Cedeño (taekwondo), Duvan Langa (taekwondo), Jacinta Sandinford (track and field),Nancy Vallecilla (track and field), Nicolas Lapentti Gómez(tennis), Boris Burov (weightlifting),Galo Legarda (billiards), Mariuxi Febres (swimming) and Alberto Spencer Herrera (soccer).
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Like Volcans National Park (Rwanda), Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra (Indonesia), Ha Long Bay (Vietnam)and Iguazu Waterfalls (Argentina and Brazil), Galapagos National Park is one of the nature wonders of the world.It is the most important natural monument of Ecuador.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Ecuador is famous in Latin America as the birthplace of Oswaldo Guayasamín, one of the best painters in the 20th century.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…The biodiversity of Ecuador is one of its greatest riches.Bird life is prolific… Ecuador ranks fifth in the world for the number of species it hosts.In Ecuador we can find more than 1.445 species of birds (compared to only 600 in the United States).
DID YOU KNOW THAT…The 5th Taekwondo World Championship was held in Guayaquil, Ecuador,in February 1982.National teams from 36 countries came to Guayaquil for the competition.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Ecuador was a founding member of the United Nations in 1945…
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Ecuador is rich in resources such as shrimps, bananas, flowers,coffee and petroleum.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Rosalía Arteaga Serrano de Fernández de Cordova was elected president of Ecuador for 3 days (February 9,1997-February 11, 1997).She was Ecuador´s first female president.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Without a doubt, the most famous sportsperson in Ecuadorian history is Jefferson Leonardo Pérez Quesada.Surprisingly, he won the gold medal in 20-kilometer walk at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…With a total area of nearly 109,500 sq.km, Ecuador is bigger than the United Kingdom, Israel, Luxembourg, Singapur, Bahrein and Hong Kong combined.More than 13 million people live there.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…American first lady Eleanor Rosalynn Smith Carter visited Ecuador in 1978.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Jorge Icaza (1906-1978) is Ecuador´s most famous contemporary writer.He wrote the widely acclaimed “Huasipungo” (1934).
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Ecuador is one of the oldest republics in the Third World.Ecuador became independent country in 1822,
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Betty Pino, a distinguished journalist, was born in Ecuador.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Ecuadorian culture reflects an admixture of Spanish, African and native Indian influences, similar in many respects to the traditions of Peru and Colombia.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…At least thirty percent of the country´s natural land resources were dedicated to conservation with laws prohibiting hunting,exploitation and trapping in park areas.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…María Soledad Diab Aguilar is one of the most beautiful Ecuadorian woman of all time.She was named Miss Ecuador-Universe in 1992. Miss Ecuador won Miss Photogenic during the Miss Universe 1992 Beauty Pageant held in Bangkok, Thailand.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Between July 13 and July 29,2007,Ecuadorian delegation participated in the Pan American Games held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, winning 5 gold, 4 silver, and 10 bronze medals. Overall the Ecuadorian team ranked eleventh…
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Frederick Ashton, a world-famous dancer and choreographer, was born on September 17, 1904, in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Galapagos tortoise is a national symbol of Ecuador.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…2004 was the second time the Miss Universe pageant was held in South America. The site was mystical Quito, the capital city of Ecuador.For the second time, Australia (Jennifer Hawkins) won the universal crown.There were a number of big favorites among Ecuadorian journalists, including Miss Ukraine (Okelsandra Nikolayenko), Miss USA (Shandi Ren Finnessey) and Miss Venezuela (Ana Karina Añez Delgado)….Maria Susana Rivadeniera Simball became the second Ecuadorian woman to reach the semi-finals in Miss Universe. Miss Ecuador 2004 impressed judges with her personality, beauty and intelligence. One of the judges was Jefferson Pérez (gold olympic medalist).
DID YOU KNOW THAT…In 1996 Quito, the capital of Ecuador, had a population of only 1,487,523.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…The national sport in Ecuador is soccer, called “fútbol”…Ecuador qualified for the 2006 FIFA World Cup…Edson Arantes do Nascimento,best known as “Pele”, once said, “They play the most modern and surprising soccer in all Latin America”.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Pope John Paul II visited Ecuador in 1985.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Mike Judge, who is a famous American animator and producer, was born in Guayaquil,Ecuador.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…Naturalist Charles Darwin visited Ecuador (1835) and was delighted by the botanical and entomological diversity, collecting plants and animals from the Galapagos islands…
DID YOU KNOW THAT…The first largest city in Ecuador is Guayaquil.This city hosted the 4th Swimming World Championship in August 1982.
DID YOU KNOW THAT…first lady Martha Bucaram de Roldós (1979-1981) led the Ecuadorian delegation to the United Nations Denmark Conference on Women in 1980.She was a woman that always worked with love for Ecuador.
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Ecuador seeking defense ties with Iran
Ecuador’s Defense Minister Javier Ponce said on Thursday that his country was seeking defense ties with Iran.
His remarks come as Washington has expressed discomfort with Tehran’s growing influence in Latin America.
“We have our own policies, our own geostrategic positions, and what interests us, with Iran for instance, is boosting information technology and national defense strategies,” he told a radio channel in Ecuador, according to Iran’s state-run Press TV channel.
Ponce said that Ecuador was seeking to “open up collaboration with nations that are very willing to help Ecuador develop its own defense industry.”
During a visit to Iran last December, the Iranian and Ecuadorian presidents agreed to establish embassies in Tehran and Quito.
Following that visit, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa said that he had looked into buying weapons from the Islamic Republic, reports AFP.
Ponce also met his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Mostafa Najjar, during that visit. Both defense ministers expressed hope that Iran and Ecuador will be able to expand their defense cooperation, reports the Fars news agency.
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UK mission group helps rescue bus crash victims in Ecuador
A busload of more than 40 University of Kentucky faculty and students were on their way to work at a medical clinic in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador on Monday afternoon when the cars ahead came to a halt on the winding rural highway.
Two of the UK medical residents participating in the Shoulder to Shoulder Ecuador mission program hopped out to see what the holdup was. Around the bend, they saw that a bus and a tanker truck had collided, sending the bus skidding down a steep hillside.
Passengers were lying in the ravine. Others were sitting dazed and bleeding on the roadside. Only one Ecuadorean ambulance had reached the scene.
The two UK doctors, John Ragsdale and Jamie Bamford, quickly waved to their group for backup before rushing down the hill.
“We ran down, and people were screaming, ‘Help me, help me, help me,’” Bamford said in a telephone interview from Ecuador. “And you know the people who really need your help the most aren’t the ones screaming.”
As doctors, they have been trained to treat the type of broken bones, abdominal injuries and head gashes they were seeing at the bottom of the Ecuadorean mountain.
But it’s one thing to patch someone up in a hospital emergency room surrounded by medical technology.
It’s something else to rush into a ravine filled with injured people — who speak a different language — and few available medical supplies, even basics such as bandages and backboards.
Ragsdale, an internal medicine specialist who has one year left in his residency at UK, said he’d never handled so many injured at one time and never outside of the hospital. Instinct, he said, carried him through.
“One part of it is that we’re well-trained, and we know what it is we have to do to prioritize,” he said. “You have to deal with the airway before you deal with breathing before you deal with circulation.”
Ragsdale and Bamford, joined by their medical colleagues from UK and the Ecuadorean emergency responders, began seeking out the most severely injured.
“The bus was on its side with the front smashed in. Some people had climbed out, but there were about 15 people around the site laying on rocks and in the mud,” Ragsdale said.
The UK students not trained in medicine pitched in, collecting water from a mountain stream.
“It was a real group of young-people heroes,” said Dr. Thomas Young, a UK professor of pediatrics and one of the leaders of the team in Ecuador. “I don’t think any of them thought about themselves.”
Shoulder to Shoulder
Since 2002, Young and a team of UK professors and students have traveled to Ecuador to volunteer at medical clinics in the capital city of Quito and in the city of Santo Domingo de los Colorados deep in the Andes.
The group gives checkups and treatments to children of poor families in Santo Domingo, as well as children of the indigenous Tsáchila people who live outside the city.
This year, 26 students, 11 faculty and six staff members from UK’s colleges of medicine, nursing, public health, health sciences, dentistry, design, education, and arts and sciences made the trek.
They arrived in Ecuador late Friday and held a clinic in the northern city of Cayambe, the first stop in their week-long trip.
Along with their Ecuadorean partners, Peace Corps workers and University of San Francisco medical students, the UK squad was en route from Quito to Santo Domingo on Monday afternoon when they came across the bus accident.
“I went on the trip two years ago, and you do great work in the clinics,” Bamford said. “I don’t think any of us expected to come across such a tragedy.”
Lindsay Burns, who is finishing her residency next month in pediatrics, said at least 20 passengers were with the bus at the bottom of the hill, with 10 more at the top.
The Ecuadorean newspaper El Migrante reported that the bus driver was killed and 27 people were hurt.
For the first 15 to 20 minutes after the UK group arrived, Americans outnumbered the Ecuadorean responders.
“Some of us knew Spanish, and some of us didn’t, so we were communicating in charades trying to direct the other EMTs,” Burns said. “Nobody was technically in charge. But we all got the work done.”
Fate on a mountain
Bamford, who is in her last month of residency with specialties in pediatrics, adult psychiatry and child psychiatry, speaks some Spanish. One of the first of the injured people she came to was a woman in her late teens or early 20s lying with her hand under her head.
“She said she couldn’t move her arms,” Bamford said. “She could move her legs, and she was breathing. She was definitely in shock.”
The man next to her kept telling her that her baby was OK. But Bamford couldn’t see a baby nearby.
Finally, the girl said she was pregnant. She needed to be taken up the hill on a backboard. But even as the Ecuadorean National Guard and other emergency workers arrived, there weren’t enough straps or neck braces to hold the victims to the backboards for the steep climb up the hill.
So several students and staff made straps by ripping up the 25 Shoulder to Shoulder T-shirts they were bringing to give staff at the Santo Domingo clinic. Bamford wrapped two shirts around the pregnant woman’s neck to support her.
“It was quite overwhelming,” Bamford said. “But I don’t think we realized until after it was over.”
The young doctors said they felt fortunate to have helped out.
“If this had happened 10 minutes later, we would have been past it and wouldn’t have known about it,” Ragsdale said. “Or if it had been much earlier we would have been too far back.”
Bamford called it more than luck.
“A bus rolls down a hill and there are 40 medical professionals behind it,” she said. “Here’s a great example of fate.”
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Ecuador – What You May Not Know
Most people in school have failed geography and are not aware that the Galapagos islands are actually part of Ecuador. It is the smallest country in South America, and if you would like to locate it on the map it is just a little bit south west of Columbia. Here are some other not so well know facts about Ecuador you may just find interesting.
The Currency Is The U.S. Dollar
The national currency in Ecuador is actually the US dollar. So if you plan to travel here anytime soon you can cross of money exchange on your list since you will not have to. If fact Ecuador does produce some of its own currency to use it is officially only the US dollar that is used and all the bills are imported from the US. Be sure to bring as many small bills as you can since larger denominations are not usually able to be broken except at banks.
Ecuador Isn’t Hot
Ecuador has long thought to be one of the hottest countries, so most people will avoid it just because there is the notion its unbearable. But in reality it only really gets hot in the Amazon basin. The capitol of Ecuador Quito sits roughly 9000 feet and it is usually a mild spring time temperate zone most of the year. Once in a while it will reach the higher end of the mercury but the daily temperature in Ecuador is usually around the mid to upper 60s. Night’s are of course cooler but never below freezing. Upon my travels through most of the town it is very similar town to town.
There is one exception but it is because of the proximity of height in Ecuador the city of Guayaguil. Guayaguilis is the largest city in Ecuador and its average temperature is in the higher numbers around 80s most of the year. With lows temps ranging in the 60s- 70s range most of the time. Rarely have I ever seen it ever hit 100. But with the encroachment of concrete that seems to hold heat well. The temperature will surely rise on some occasions.
All the weather near the sea is by most standards moderate a cool Pacific Ocean flow that runs along this part of South American coast. In another city, Manta for example it has never hit 100 degrees and is usually in the mid to upper 70s and 80s. You will even need to put a sweater on at night or on some early morning to keep comfortable in some of the great resort towns along the beach
Ecuador Has Big Mountains
There is one interesting hardly known fact that I came across about Ecuador. That fact is that the peak of mount Chimborazo in Ecuador is the furthest point away from the center of the earth. If you were to stand on top of it you could not get any closer to the sun or space anywhere else on earth. Which is quite amazing feat considering most people would say mount Everest is the tallest. But then it depends on how you measure it because of the bulge at the center of the planet this is possible.
The mountain Chimborazo is about 21,000 feet high and mostly covered in glaciers. There are several other mountains in the country that exceed 17000 feet. The most famous of these giant mountains is Cotopaxi. Because, of the fact that mount Cotopaxi has the most perfect volcanic cone shape. It shows up in publications, advertisements, and post cards regularly. It maxs out at around 20000 feet high and has a wonderful scenic hike up to a small location along side of it from the Las Cajas national Park. So if you like hiking or climbing this might be the mountain challenge you been looking for.
Other Little Known Facts About Ecuador
Most people who know that the US dollar is Ecuador’s currency kind of over look this little country out of the way. Because they assume since its US currency that it is more expensive then a lot of the other countries that surround it. This is falsely exaggerated and in fact this is one of the least inexpensive countries to visit. You can buy a wonderful meal in most towns for under a few dollars most hotels in towns are around 20 dollars a night to stay. But, if you speak Spanish and know how to negotiate and are ready to walk away most places will give it for you cheaper. The little creature comforts you get here compared to the states you would be paying n a lot of money for a lot of the similar treatment and services.
Traveling in Ecuador is relatively safe as well, no more dangerous than visiting some of the danger spots in your own city. It is a stable democracy yet some people assume that since it is near Columbia it is all about drug runners. Well I’m sure Ecuador has its own issues with drugs it is hardly even close to the same as Columbia. So I invite you to come and see what other wonders await you in this wonderful country.
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Ecuador's Correa Has 51.92% Of Vote With 96.55% Counted
The latest official results from Ecuador’s April 26 general election show President Rafael Correa consolidating his lead, with 51.92% of the votes.
The results are from 96.55% of the total votes cast, the government’s elections agency said Monday on its Web site.
Former President Lucio Gutierrez is in second place with 28.17%, while banana magnate Alvaro Noboa is third with 11.44%.
According the Ecuadorian law, to win in the first round a candidate must obtain an absolute majority or receive at least 40% of the valid votes and have a margin of more than 10 percentage points over the next rival.
A left-leaning economist, Correa first took office in early 2007.
The approval of a new constitution in Ecuador led to the calling of the elections. Under the terms of the new constitution Correa will be able to run again in 2013 for another four-year term.
Around 10.5 million Ecuadorians were eligible to vote in the April 26 election
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