Essential Spanish phrases

The banana capital of the world — Machala's own description of itself, printed on the welcome signs. It is not marketing hyperbole so much as a statement of what the entire local economy does.

The box and the bunch — the units the banana trade is counted and priced in. The official minimum box price is set annually and is the number the whole province argues about every December.

A shrimp farm. The estuaries and old mangrove flats around Machala and the Jambelí archipelago are full of them, and along with bananas they are what leaves through the port.

A person from El Oro province, and the adjective for anything of it. The province is named for its gold — Zaruma and Portovelo up in the hills have been mined for centuries and still are.

On this coast 'winter' means the hot, wet season, roughly January to April. 'Verano' is the drier, cooler, greyer rest of the year. The words are the reverse of what a northerner expects.

The Ecuadorian ID card, issued by the Registro Civil once your visa is granted. Banks, the IESS, the SRI, Aguas Machala and every municipal counter work from the cédula number rather than your passport.

The unified basic salary, USD 482 for 2026. Almost every Ecuadorian visa income threshold and social-security floor is a multiple of it, and it is reset each December.

The city's port, ten minutes from the centre, run under concession by a Turkish operator. Bananas, shrimp and the great majority of Ecuador's copper exports go out through it.

The archipelago and beach across the channel from Puerto Bolívar, reached by launch. It is where Machala goes at weekends, and it is mangrove and estuary rather than open ocean.

The municipal mobility company. It runs vehicle registration and the annual technical inspection for the canton — the national agency does not. Your driving licence still comes from the ANT.

The border town south of here where Ecuador meets Peru. A busy, chaotic land crossing about an hour and a bit away, and the reason Machala has a permanent cross-border trade and a permanent smuggling problem.

The black mangrove clam and the mangrove crab, both gathered from the estuaries by hand and both central to the local table. There are closed seasons on each — the veda — and eating them out of season is both illegal and pointless.