On the way to Galapagos: Guayaquil

28.06.2007 - 30.06.2007 28 °C

Guayaquil was on our way to the Galapagos in that our flight was leaving from there. All planes that go to the Galapagos must pass by Guayaquil, which lies only 4 hours by bus from Cuenca. But what 4 hours!! The road goes through the mountains and descends from 2,500m to 0 with a very high number of curves and bents, all of which are taken at insane speed by the bus drivers, who seem to be completely oblivious to the dangers of taking blind corners at the speed of light. Anyways! We made it both ways.

While we were passing by, we decided to give ourselves an extra day in Guayaquil, given the good reports we had read on other blogs. And it wasn´t actually a mistake, despite the first impressions. As we first stepped out in the city (second biggest in Ecuador) we wondered if the authors of those positive blogs were weird or what. What a horrible sticky and dirty place! We checked in at the Velez Hotel, which is a large ugly building that looks and smells like a hospital. For $10 dollars you get a white and super clean double room with fan and bathroom, so it is not bad really, especially if you manage to get past the really unfriendly receptionist – the worst we have come across so far.
A few squares from the hotel, which lies quite centrally, is the Simon Bolivar square, or the iguanas square. This square is literally filled with rather large iguanas, which are absolutely beautiful and do not have any fear of people. They all come out in the morning during feeding time and they are everywhere, including in the trees – despite the care and attention not to stand underneath one, I almost got shat on my head by one of them! Got some drops of water from above the high trees, and it was not raining…
So this was the first highlight of Guayaquil. The second one, not necessarily in this order, was the Malecon. Since 2000, the Guayaquil authorities have made a great effort to clean up the city and make it more safe and tourist-oriented. One of the ways to do this was to build two very attractive promenades – the Malecones - one on each of the two riverfronts of the city, which are really modern and pleasant. There are gardens, fountains, monuments and walkways, and the whole area is heavy guarded and patrolled and so very safe. The funny thing with the Malecon 2000, on the main river, is that this river flows in opposite directions depending on the time of day!! There are 2 tides and each time the tide changes, the river flows in the opposite direction. Quite weird. At the end of one of the Malecones there is a super modern IMAX cinema, where we went to watch Spiderman III for the whole of $4!!
But this is not all. Past the IMAX there is Guayaquil´s third showpiece: the old district of Las Peñas, a very picturesque neighbourhood built on a hill made of brightly painted wooden houses. The whole lot is extremely manicured, everything is painted new and perfect, there are guards everywhere and it is a beautiful place where to stroll up to the top of the fortress, even though the place is so polished that it looks almost fake.

On both nights we were there we met with extremely strange characters. The first night on the Malecon 2000 Gregory hooked up with a black Ecuadorian young guy called Stalin!!! He eventually sat himself at our table and ended up escorting us home. Communication was not easy – and it wasn’t my Spanish, trust me – this Stalin guy was really a little strange. Not happy enough to hang out with someone with such a name and weird, we also walked home with him in the deserted dangerous streets of Guayaquil. I really was wondering what´s the point in being so careful with the food I eat before the Galapagos and then walk home in the middle of the night in the centre of Guayaquil with a weirdo!!!! Anyways, he was harmless and nobody attacked us, thank god. The second night Gregory walked into a shoe shop and we started talking to this 16-year-old very young girl with braces in her teeth. We asked her where the Malecon del Salado was – we were after a seafood dinner - she ended up escorting us there and eating out half of our food!! Another really weird one, and we both stood there and watched each other as she misunderstood our offer to share the food by grabbing hold of the main dish and gobbling it down, while she was telling us that we must have been sent by god to help her go to Europe to find fame…She was a very good opera singer (she was, she did sing us the Ave Maria...) but could not give us an email address because she did not use the internet. Because her pastor had told her that the internet is evil. Right. Thinking about it, Stalin did not have an email address either…

So we quite enjoyed Guayaquil. But THE GALAPAGOS WERE ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC!!!!! It will take a while to put the pictures together though, bear with us a couple of days…

Parque Simon Bolivar