Wandering around Guayaquil (and Ecuador in general)

I am officially sick of bread! I don’t know how it happened (didn´t even know that it was possible), but I woke up this morning and immediately decided that just one more empanada, croissant or baguette would surely be the end of me. My carbohydrate intake in general has been pretty excessive of late. Therefore, my new goal is to limit myself to only one galleta grande (huge cookie) next week, instead of the usual four or five! Regarding my weekend: while it didn’t turn out exactly as planned, we (Julie and I) at least got an adventure out of it, and definitely covered an impressive distance considering the short amount of time we had for the trip. On Thursday, we departed from Quito at around 10:30 PM and attempted (with great difficulty) to sleep during the eight-hour bus ride to Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador, which is near the coast.We spent forever trying to find a comfortable position that would also enable us to take full advantage of the beach towels we were using as blankets. Fortunately, it eventually worked out and we got barely enough rest to carry us through the next day. At 6:30 AM, we arrived in Guayaquil, checked into a hotel downtown, and spent the rest of the day walking around the city, taking pictures and searching for suitable places to eat that also had a vegetarian option because Julie is a vegetarian (like the majority of my closest friends so it seems). We forgot (of course) that because it was a holiday, almost everything was closed during the day. Despite this minor setback, the walk was beautiful. We first ventured to Parque Bolívar to observe the many turtles that swim in the ponds and the many (MANY) iguanas that apparently find great enjoyment in relieving themselves onto the heads of unsuspecting tourists from their refuge in the trees above. Our next stop was the Malecón, a newly revived boardwalk, known for its monuments, painters, music and restaurants. The thing that we found most exciting, however, was the promotion of recycling (as shown below)!

I’ll admit that we received a few strange looks from locals when taking pictures of trash bins, but it was absolutely worth it (our friends in Quito wouldn’t have believed it otherwise). My favorite part of Guayaquil was a neighborhood called Las Peñas, where I took the majority of my photos.

From a distance, it looks like the hills of San Francisco, but the community itself is exceptionally old with some 500 stairs leading to a tremendous view of the city. Unfortunately, after all the walking (from roughly 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM), we were too tired to enjoy the celebrations that night; and after an early dinner on the Malecón, we called it a night at only 9:00 PM. Saturday was a little strange because although we’d been planning to go to the coast, the news of protests and strikes along the road there prompted us to head four hours in the other direction to a town called Riobamba in the highlands. We chose this destination for two reasons in particular: first, it's much closer to Quito (which meant less driving the following day); and second, we love the way Riobamba sounds when said fast by conductors who try to get us to go there every weekend. It was nice to switch from a bustling city to una ciudad más tranquilo. We wandered through the Saturday market, got a $1.50 manicure down the street from our amazing hostel, Oasis, and later sat down at a pizzeria to watch the soccer game between Venezuela and Ecuador, which Ecuador sadly lost. Overall, the weekend was really fun, but I always love coming home to Quito and sleeping in my own bed (not that I’ve slept a lot in the past few days). Today I had two midterms for Social Problems in Ecuador and Volcanology and tomorrow I have to go to school early again to work on a group project. Hopefully I’ll make it home in time to steal a few hours of sleep before my Salsa dancing lesson with Pao at 8:00! ¡Hasta lluego!