U.S. Motorists, if there's any chance you'll be owning or operating a car after moving to Ecuador, ponder your choice:
To get your Ecuadorian drivers license (DL), would you rather spend a total of 10-15 hours in a Spanish-language classroom in EC being taught the rules of the road...
Or would you prefer just to present your U.S. driving credentials and take a written exam (albeit in Spanish) whose answers are already posted on the Internet...
Well, of course, you'd rather show your license and skip the boring classes.
Problem is, if you didn't get your license certified and then get the certification apostilled (documented by your state's attorney general for international use) before you left for Ecuador, you're in for a bureaucratic ride.
Take my case.
I didn't drive, as permitted in Ecuador, on my unexpired Pennsylvania DL during my first six months in the country. Now it's past that six-month period, so I'm required to have an Ecuador DL if I get behind the wheel.
Remember I need Pennsylvania (at PennDOT, the PA department of transportation) to issue a certification of the DL, and the PA attorney general's office then to issue the apostille.
I emailed back and forth to bureaucrats in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for a month seeking to find out how to get PennDOT to issue the DL certificate and then move the certificate down the street in Harrisburg, PA, to get the apostille at the PA attorney general's office.
When the dust cleared, I was informed it wasn't done that way.
I would have to send a check via international mail from Ecuador to Pennsylvania with an application for the PennDOT paper, which would then be sent back to me in Ecuador.
Then I would have to send the PennDOT certificate back to Harrisburg for the apostille*, which in turn would be sent back to me in Ecuador.
Now if you know anything about international mail in general and Correos del Ecuador in particular, you are aware it generally takes about two weeks to get a simple envelope one-way between the U.S. and Ecuador. So with four mail deliveries, that would mean a minimum of about two months just to get the envelopes sent back and forth.
On top of which you be aware that the likelihood of a significant additional delay or lost envelope -- given the four deliveries involved -- is highly possible.
All of which leads up to my conclusion that you should get all DL paperwork taken care of before leaving for Ecuador.
I met a longtime Expat at InterNations in Quito this week, who told me that it took him almost a year to clear these paperwork hurdles and obtain his Ecuadorian DL a few weeks ago.
It's two more pieces of paper for which you'll apply at a time you're already busy, but it could save months of waiting and wondering, later.
*Update of September 26, 2015... According to Ecuador's Jefa de Licencias, an apostille is not currently necessary if issued by some states in the U.S. See Report #38 in this thread for more details.
cccmedia in Quito