Fueling Up

Even before we got into Puerto Amistad, we got ourselves on the 'need diesel' list. Things change so frequently in Ecuador that we wanted to get topped off as soon as we could.

We opted NOT to fuel up at Puerto Lucia Yacht Club's nice easy fuel dock... their price for 'foreigner diesel' has gone up to a whopping $3/gallon. This is partly because they are trying to recover the cost of all the extra equipment they had to put in, to be able to legally sell diesel to foreigners. Mario, the PLYC manager, told me they had spent over $100K to comply with the permitting process to be able to sell diesel to foreigners.

Diesel in Ecuador, on the street corner, sells for about $1 per gallon. This is so cheap compared to prices in neighboring countries, that some 'fishing' boats opted to start transporting diesel instead of fishing. So the Ecuadorean government declared that NO foreigners could buy diesel. At All. This was a couple of years ago, and you can imagine the gasps that swept through the cruising community. The wind is so light and flukey in this area, that even most budget cruisers opt to turn their motor on rather than roll around in a sloppy sea. We arrived in Puerto Amistad last February literally on fumes, because of our long windless passage down from Costa Rica.

When the government declared that foreigners couldn't buy diesel, there WERE ways for an enterprising cruiser to GET diesel... usually involving handing your portable tanks to an Ecuadorean and having them go buy it. But this kind of felt like cheating, and 'clean wake' cruisers didn't like to go around the system.

What has evolved in Puerto Amistad is a legally permitted process whereby (accompanied with lots of paperwork), Puerto Amistad buys the diesel in a portable tank at the gas station, and pumps it into your tanks from their launcha. Puerto Amistad is working on a more permanent solution, but for now, they are still using Carlos, a big lancha, and what looks like a big black plastic water tank with a small electric fuel pump. The overhead is low, and so far, so is the price. We bought 91 gallons at $1.50 per gallon. A savings of about $120 over fueling up at PLYC.

Part of the checkout process when you leave, is documenting how much fuel you came with, how much you bought, and how much you leave with. More paperwork!