Guayaquil - still

• Nicola's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Guayaquil

Trip Start Sep 13, 2004 Previous
Entry Trip End May 06, 2005 Next
Entry

  Guayaquil, Ecuador
Saturday, October 23, 2004

On our return to Guayaquil we stayed more centrally in the Grand Hotel. Tracey and I had a huge suite, into which all my rooms for the next week would probably fit. The dressing room was the size of the cabin on the boat we'd just been on. We also had a kitchen/lounge, balcony, 2TVs, 2 fridges (both sadly empty other than water) and even 2 basins in the bathroom. We assumed everyone else in the group had the same, but their disbelief as we described our room made it evident this was not the case, and in the end we had to invite them all up for coffee so that they could see for themselves. Not sure what we'd done to deserve it, but there you go.

On the plane from the Galapagos I found a small article in the newspaper about an explosion of the volcano Tungurahua. Perhaps the Foreign Office were on to something after all... But later, speaking to some Ecuadorians in Cusco, I found out that due to the wind direction Baņos had been unharmed whilst Riobamba, where we had spent the night instead, received a covering of ash.

The next day everyone else left, and my accommodation, no longer paid for with my group trip, was a little more basic, but still had an ensuite bathroom and a TV with very bad telenovelas. I'm easing myself back in to the independent traveller lifestyle. Leaving the Grand Hotel at night I requested a taxi, assuming they would just hail me one in the street, but actually they provide an onward taxi service to their guests. The driver was unsure of exactly where Hotel California was and we had to consult the map together a few times.

01 Tungurahua 'erupts'

I don't think many of their guests go there.

I'd visited Malecon 2000 from end to end - a heavily policed riverside development with plenty of typical junkfood restaurants but also some nice garden areas and a traditional dance competition the evening I was there. I saw the square full of iguanas - they hide in the trees - and visited a few churches and a museum and thought that was Guayaquil about done. I headed to the airport for my flight to Lima quite early as they have a bad habit of overbooking, but when I got there I found the flight had been delayed by 3 hours. Having checked in in about 20 seconds that left me with 5 hours to play with and the most exciting thing in the airport was a coffee shop. So I grasped my hand luggage with all my most valuable belongings inside and headed back to the centre. At least this would give me a chance to post the postcard I had forgotten about, or so I thought. In actual fact the post office was closed, there were no postboxes outside it and the security guard told me there were none at all in all of central Guayaquil, like this was normal for a major city, or a minor one for that matter. Grand Hotel to the rescue again.

Back at the airport I managed to rouse one of the four immigration officers from painting their nails/talking about last night's Eastenders equivalent, or whatever.

Back in Lima the back door of the plane was opened and I thought as I was leaving that something had gone wrong with the toilets. It didn't go away though and turned out to be the smell of Lima; the bus driver told me it was the sea air. Lovely.

At immigration I pressed the button for random baggage checks, and hooray! it turned red for 'stop and empty your belongings then spend the next two hours repacking'. The guard ushered me through though... phew.

Slideshow Print this entry Share

Previous Entry Next Entry