The gleaming Malecon
Trip Start
Sep 28, 2007
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Trip End
Oct 29, 2007
We´ve spent the past two days in Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador. The city is warm and humid, filled with parks and monuments, plazas and churches, department stores and hotels. Quite coismopolitan really. Yesterday, we walked along the Malecon, a riverside boardwalk which the city has spent millions of dollars renovating. The Malecon stretches for miles, paved with bricks and encompassing historic landmarks, a mall, restuarants, a musuem, an IMAX theater, etc. Combined with the bustling downtown area, Guayaquil seems far more like a modern American city than anywhere else we´ve been. At the northern most point of the boardwalk, a hill is capped by a lighthouse and the city´s first chapel. Once surrounded by slums, the city has since redeveloped the dilapidated houses and dusty streets into a picturesque walkway lined with ice cream shops and restaurants all the way up to the top. Still, if you look off to the sides fo the walkway, you can see the neighboring slums- we are hoping that the city is planning on eventually fixing up these areas too! At the top is a small naval musem, which has badly translated signs along side the original Spanish. Make sure you check out the accompanying picture!
