Guayaquil: Iguanas on Steroids, 466 Stairs to the Top, Trash Trucks that Sing

---

At the end of our trip, we spent a few days in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city. It was in this largest city, we spent a few hours with the largest Iguanas we have ever seen, Parque Seminario, appropriately nicknamed Iguana Park.

This park, located smack dab in the center of the concrete jungle, is full of hundreds of these seemingly out of place creatures. Ironically, they seem to co-exist quite well with the human spectators walking about, but a few of them didn’t seem to co-exist so peacefully with each other. We witnessed a serious Iguana fight between two males who appeared to be doing a dance of dominance in hopes of winning a female Iguana nearby.

Later that day, we hiked up the 466 stairs (they are numbered) to the top of one of the city’s most historical neighborhoods, Las Penas. The neighborhood, constructed on the Santa Ana hill in the mid 17^th century, boasts vibrantly painted homes in a myriad of colors. Cafes, bars and art shops line the stairway to the top. The top of the hill offers quite a spectacular view of the river and the city below. There is a beautiful church and the Fortín del Cerro ('Fort of the Hill'😉 with numerous cannons pointed to the rivers below. Years ago, the cannons protected the city from pirates.

Later, we enjoyed our final Ecuadorian dinner, went back to our hostal for our last night’s sleep, only to be awoken by raging music very similar to that of something you would either hear in a Disney cartoon or by an ice cream truck in the US. A quick peek through the window, we were shocked to see it was the trash truck singing the tunes as it makes its rounds through the city picking up trash each night.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get much sleep after as the fire alarm in our building malfunctioned and went off repeatedly every 20 minutes, all night long. It made for a very long night, especially since we had to wake up at 4:30 am to catch our flight back home.

Our plane has just departed Ecuador, concluding our journey for now.

We are so blessed to have experienced such an amazing country in the manner in which we did. We have been enlightened and have a much more profound appreciation for the remarkable world we share with so many fascinating, culturally diverse and kind-hearted people.

---