Blogs from Guayaquil, West, Ecuador, South America - page 14

Hola a todo el mundo de nuevo. Como os dijimos en nuestro ultimo blog estabamos en un lugar paradisiaco del norte del Peru llamado Chérrepe y de ahi nos fuimos a Mancora un lugar encantador al lado de la playa y cerca de la frontera de Ecuador. Al dia siguiente entramos en Ecuador rumbo a Guayaquil. De momento Ecuador nos ha parecido un pais realmente intersante. Es un pais que en los ultimos 10 años ha tenido 8 presidentes! y curiosamente durante estos ultimos 8 años de gobiernos mayoritariamente conservadores se ha dado un exodo masivo de emigrantes ecuatorianos a tierras Europeas y Norteamericanas. Hace un año y medio salió elegido Correa, un presidente izquierdista de la linea de Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega y Fidel Castro. Probablemente este cambio de rumbo se ha ... read more

Here is what happened ... We had just returned to our hostel. There are huge bird cages near the front door and when we walked by them the birds started to flip out. Like really flip out. They were going crazy. We couldn't figure out what we had done to startle them. At the same time there was a man sitting on the couch watching a movie and we asked him what movie he was watching. He jumped up and said "EARTHQUAKE!" - but neither of us got what he meant. We just looked dumbly at him like "Huh? A movie called Earthquake? We haven't heard of that movie before." And then the ground started to shake, like really, really shake, and the walls and columns of our hostel were shaking too. The man asked us ... read more

I arrived in Guayaquil, Ecuador yesterday. The largest city in Ecuador, it holds about 2.5 million people. Guayaquil resembles what you may expect of a large 3rd world city; children peddling merchandise at stop lights, trash in the streets, stray dogs roaming about, worn down, poorly constructed buildings, a general haze of smog and an odd odor filling the air. The poverty of the area is very apparent. There are some nicer areas (parks, malls, a newly constructed riverfront area (the Melecon), fancy hotels, gated communities), but the majority is stricken with poverty. 70% of the people in Guayaquil are considered poor, families surviving on about $45 a week. I hear that there has been much improvement in the last decade to clean up the city and make it more tourist friendly. For instance, they've decorated ... read more

I think I´m finally used to the heat. Why? Because at 75F I get cold, and apparently it´s been 85-90 the past two weeks, and I actually thought it was getting a little cooler. I´m so glad though. The only time I really notice that it´s hot out is when I go into an air-conditioned building (there aren´t very many) and walk back out the door into a blast of warm. I also really need to orient myself with the Celsius scale, because that´s mostly what they use here. I don´t sweat quite as much anymore that I definitely don´t mind. Last Monday (Oct. 9) was independence day for Guayaquil, so, you guessed it! More parades! For the second time I hopped on the bus with all the dancers from my school and we drove into ... read more

Are ship is currently located in a very bad area of guayadil. So in order to get out of the port one most go through extremely high security. So even though we were docked at 7ish we weren’t allowed off the ship till 10. and once we got off we weren’t allowed to walk anywhere, so we had to wait 30 minutes for the shuttle to come by to take us 3 ft away. Once we finally made it into town we did some walking around the city. Stopped in a few stores, and went into an outside restaurant. They served us the lunch of the day which consisted of crb soup, chicken and rice, desert and jucie, for the very high prive of $1.50 …..yea!! Pretty freaking amazing when we fed 5 people for ... read more