The fantastical adventures of Colin and Francesca: Guayaquil City

On the 20th of December Colin and I caught our flight back to mainland Ecuador from the Galapagos. Guayaquil city may be the largest city in Ecuador, but it isn’t exactly the most picturesque port for a return. In fact, with the combined pollution, crime, scary drivers, and big city attitude it was one of the worst cities we went to in all of South America. Our first hotel was so bad (bugs, horrible internet, rude service) that we had to change hotels during our 2 week stay – and then we (to our knowledge) got robbed of our petty cash stash at the second hotel we stayed in – which we only found out ages after we had left, though I mentioned while we were staying there to Colin that it looked like the housekeeping had moved around all of our room’s contents in a strange way more than once.

But back to the first hotel. We decided to spend Christmas in Guayaquil because we didn’t feel like traveling around. Colin bought me an awesome purple stuffed turtle (which I promptly named Johnny) and some beautiful flowers as my Christmas present, along with a sweet card he wrote me. I spent one day leading up to Christmas putting together a fake ‘Listverse’ list of different fun moments Colin spent with some of his favorite animals over the past couple of years. It was really nice to have a few days just relaxing after our long cruise. Once we got our energy back we decided to hit the frantic streets of Guayaquil.

One of the interesting places worth visiting in the city is the Parque de las Iguanas also known as Parque Bolívar. This park wasn’t much to see on its own, but the animals in the park were quite a sight. There were dozens of giant green land iguanas (very different looking from the land iguana cousins of theirs we saw in the Galapagos) and a very cute and strange looking huge squirrel as well. It was awesome watching the iguanas running up the trees and swimming in the small pond nearby.

Colin and I walked across the street from the park to the Catedral Metropolitana de Guayaquil. Inside the church were some carved areas covered in gold leaf and an elaborate alter. After a quick visit we decided to head down to the Malecon 2000.

The Malecon 2000 at the waterfront had loads of places to eat. The heat was starting to get to us and we wanted to duck into the cool air-conditioning of a huge McDonalds. One burger and a McFlurry later we walked along the Malecon 2000 boardwalk built over the Guayas River. As we strolled down the boardwalk we came across loads of cool looking birds and we managed to get some awesome photos, including one of a bust in the middle of the Malecon-adjacent pool of former President León Esteban Febres-Cordero Ribadeneyra, who was from Guayaquil .

Eventually we came to the Olmedo Monument, built for Jose Joaquin de Olmedo y Maruri who was the President of Ecuador from March 6, 1845 to December 8, 1845. Olmedo was a poet as well but was most known for his work on Guayaquil's independence. Olmedo initially declared the city’s independence from Spain, before the city became part of Simon Bolivar’s Gran Columbia. During that period Olmedo dedicated his life to the city, writing its national anthem and creating its flag and city shield. The memorial was interesting, but it was too hot to stick around and we entered the long, ‘tunnel-like’ underground mall underneath the Malecon 2000 boardwalk to find me a haircut and some new clothes.

Finishing in the mall we went to see the Moorish Clock Tower. This tower is 4 floors of reinforced concrete, beautifully decorated on top with an Arab cupola. The clock placed into the top of the tower was imported by Vincente Rocafuerte from England in 1842. We took some funny photos in front of the tower but couldn’t get inside as it was locked. Passing by the clock tower we walked through the main monument of the Malecon 2000 which pictured statues of Simon Bolivar and San Martin greeting each other. The two met in Guayaquil to discuss the strategy to liberate South America from Spain before the independence movement.

At the end of the Malecon 2000 was a large, sprawling botanical garden. The garden was divided into different interesting sections filled with colorful flowers including loads of orchids, strange bromeliads, and loads of various colorful and awesome birds. There are more than 60 different types of trees in the garden, both for wood and for different fruits. It was relaxing to just walk through the area on the well laid out paths and enjoy ourselves slightly away from the busy streets.

December 27th we headed to the Park Historico Guayaquil. This free park contains a city sponsored zoo and an original set of colonial houses built in Guayaquil, then transferred to the park during the 1950’s when it was purchased by the Banco La Previsora. We saw some fantastic animals, including the Guayaquil Macaw and cute little kinkajous. Unfortunately there were also a few stressed looking animals, such as a beautiful but sad white tailed deer who kept running around its pen in frustration. I always have extremely mixed feelings going to zoos, because this animal behavior is common to see in the zoos and it is obviously unfair to the animals for them to suffer by being aware of their entrapment.

The park showed us different environmental zones, including the Tropical Dry Forest common in Northern Peru and the Pacific coast of Ecuador. In this forest there is little rainfall, and thus animals have adapted to be able to travel long distances without water. We also saw other environments including Mangrove Forest, Flooded Plain Forest, and Drizzle Forest.

We reached the set of colonial houses part way through the park exhibit, and entered the House of Oyarvide. The house was owned by a renowned medical doctor - Dr. Julian Coronel Oyarvide. Dr. Oyarvide moved into the top floor of the house in 1901, while the bottom floor was a shop. The house had beautiful features, including balconies, skylights, and a grand piano. Around the corner was another preserved and restored building, a former hospice and chapel. We had a quick snack then explored a small garden which was loaded with flowers and fruiting plants. One of the most interesting was the luffa or loofah plant. This plant looks like a large zucchini, but its insides are very fibrous and when fully dried out they can be used as sponges and gloves in bathrooms and kitchens. Perhaps you have seen one, but didn’t know its origin as a vegetable you can eat!

One part of the park had a few farming houses on it, with farm tools, farm animals, and different agricultural plants. An important plant of the area in the 19th century was cocoa. Almost 5,000 farms produced cocoa at that time. Many other interesting plants dotted the farm including the panama hat palm plant of reeds, rice plants, chocolate and loads of cacti.

Before we left the park we happened to see another little entrance which had a load of interesting animals inside an ‘exhibit’ room. One of these was the rare Guayaquil Macaw. There are two populations of Guayaquil Macaws in Ecuador, one in the rainforests of Esmeralda and one in the dry forests of the south. Together the two populations number only 90 birds, so they are considered critically endangered. There was also a family of cut little kinkajous sleeping on top of each other!

In the afternoon on our way back from the park we decided to take our taxi to the street ‘6 de Marzo’ to see some of the colorful New Years Eve puppets people buy to burn. We had seen these puppets around the city and eventually asked someone what they were for. We were told that people buy paper mache puppets of politicians and pop culture figures, as well as comic book, TV and movies characters, and more – basically anything cool-looking and animated – and burn them at the stroke of midnight on the New Year. The tradition holds that burning the paper character is the same as burning the ‘old year’ past. Burning the figure helps to cleanse the bad from the previous 12 months before the new year. It all began in 1895 when there was a yellow fever epidemic in Guayaquil and people burned coffins filled with the dead’s clothing.

We walked around taking pictures of some of the more interesting ones, and a few points in other parts of the city we drove by some really big ones such as a giant Chuckie Doll. We decided to buy a small Pluto dog, and though we figured at first that we would burn it on New Years Eve, we quickly changed our minds and wanted to keep him for ourselves.

On December 28th we headed back down to the Malecon 2000 to the Miniature Museum, a small history museum with ‘talking’ dioramas. The concept is a good one – little dioramas of Guayaquil’s history are presented with an auditory explanation of what you are seeing. Unfortunately a few dioramas into the museum we wished we could get our money back. While the concept was good, it was poorly executed. The English version did not give the full translation, and the writing and delivery were too dramatic that they were pretty off-putting.There were no instructions given at the dioramas, and we were never sure which button was the one to press for the English version. When we got it wrong, we had to wait for the other language version to play out before we could try again!

Shortly after we began going around the exhibit some other people came into the museum. The cacophony of noise coming from several diorama recordings playing at the same time was unbearable, and we could not hear any of them properly. Also, the janitor was nosily opening and closing various doors and working on different parts of the museum - while we were all inside trying to experience the exhibit. There was no one at the attendant desk when we left, or we would have tried to ask for our money back.

The most interesting thing we could glean from the exhibit before it became too difficult an experience was that at one point Guayaquil was one of the top places for shipbuilding back in Colonial times. This is understandable because of how isolated the area was from Europe – there was a strong need for ships and ship repairs for the return journey. There was a special tree called the guachapeli tree which had durable and water resistant wood, excellent for shipbuilding.

On the Malecon 2000 we also found the Simon Bolivar Cultural Center (also known as the MAAC) which took us through 10,000 years of ancient history in Ecuador and some other pre-Hispanic cultures. This history started by mentioning the migrating of humans which started 100,000 years ago from East Africa and eventually came to the New World of the Americas. Vegas culture (8000-5200 BCE) then went straight into the Valdivia culture and their practices. Unlike the Vegas culture who practiced ‘door-yard garden’ horticulture (growing produce next to their own houses) the Valdivia culture began to conduct agriculture on a extensive scale. This extensive agriculture resulted in the construction of raised crop fields in the lower Guayas basin and detention ponds in the Santa Elena peninsula. Valdivia started by eating their produce in simple pottery which still survives – cooking pots, bowls, and a jar for liquids. Eventually their pottery became more decorated with etchings – and there were more than 50 different shapes of pots in total.

There were small stone Venus of Valdivia statues on display, as well as different colored spondylus shells from all over Ecuador. The spondylus shell was used by the Chorrera culture in their trade, and it can be seen represented here in the culture’s pottery along with other ceramic figures of various animals the culture encountered in different environments including humid forests, floodplains, dry forests, mangroves, and the sea.

We also paid a visit to the Museo Nahim Isaias. This museum was all about colonial art, containing 2,500 pieces from the collection of philanthropist Nahim Isaias Barquet. Some of the pieces were about the four elements, water, fire, earth, and air, while others were obviously religious showing gruesome depictions of a bloody Jesus Christ. By the end of the day we took another peak at the iguanas in the park, then had some hot drinks at a bakery before heading back to the hotel.

December 29th, we headed out to a section of dry forest called Cerro Blanco. We had a difficult time getting in to this private park as it wasn’t the weekend and there were (despite registering our visit twice online and calling numerous times) no guards around or available to take us on a hike. We settled on doing a short 1.5 hr. walk called the Sendero Buena Vista. There were some colorful birds (including stunning black and yellow caciques) on this walk, and we saw a small dark figure climbing up a tree in the distance with a long, curved tail. It seemed like it might have been a monkey at first, until thought about its shape and we later realized it was a kinkajou. Unfortunately, the brush was pretty dense, and by the time we got there – even though it was still early in the morning – it was already incredible hot and uncomfortable. The walk was a really tough uphill slog… not so fun. We didn’t spend much time here, but here are some cool pictures of the things we did happen to see:

The next morning, December 30th, I decided to visit the Museu Presley Norton which is named for the Ecuadorian archaeologist Presley Norton Yoder and contains more than 8,000 pieces, some more than 3,000-years-old. Coastal pottery contained three main periods: the Formative (4200 BCE-500 BCE), Regional Development (500 BCE-500 CE), and Integration (500 CE-1530 CE).

In the Formative period I learned more about the Valdivia culture who took their pottery designs from items in nature such as pumpkins and corn cobs. I also saw some pieces from the Machalilla culture who designed their typically black vessels with engraved lines and their figurines with red-band decorations. The Chorrera culture made whistling bottles and jars and bowls with slender walls decorated with iridescent paint. One cool Chorrera piece was an awesome looking zoomorphic ceramic jar with inlaid eyes of encrusted obsidian. Another one was a red and yellow whistling bottle (which makes a whistling noise when water is poured into it) in the shape of a human figure. In the Formative period there were many human effigy vessels created for shaman to aid their attempts to cure diseases- one effigy in particular with a humpback, a missing eye, an earlobe torn, a hernia, and a wart-producing skin disease.

The Regional Development period contained products decorated with abstract designs on them formed by resist smudging. The quality of pottery increased substantially during this period as the clay was manipulated more skillfully to increase its resistance to hot temperatures it was presented with during cooking and serving. Molds were also used for figurative vessels and figurines. As in its name, ‘regional development’ meant different areas in Ecuador developed more fully their own regional-specific pottery styles and designs.

The Integration period brought large scale agriculture and infrastructure projects with it, popular with the Milagro-Quevedo culture and the Manteno-Huancavilcas culture. There was a League of Merchants which led to commercial trade in products along the Pacific Coast. This, along with the increase in the specialization of labor, resulted in greater social differentiation. The Manteno-Huancavilcas culture had pottery pieces which displayed the tension. One incredible pottery piece was a beheaded human figure with head as a spout, and another was a statue of one man standing on top of his prisoner, symbolizing his power over the other.

Next I headed to a second museum, the Museo Municipal. Unfortunately, this museum was totally in Spanish, but it had some incredible pieces. One of these was a 8.5 meter tall totem pole made out of Guasango wood. The pole contains beautifully carved depictions of 32 human figures and 2 alligators, but its meaning is still unknown. Many of the pieces represented the same cultures as in the previous museum, but there were a few pieces from different cultures as well – I’ll post those different cultures here for some variety!

The museum went through the Colonial period of Guayaquil and spoke to the name of the city, the original city map, and its’ founding. The name Guayaquil supposedly came from the words ‘Guayas’ - the great Puna Indian chief who fought against the Incas and then against the Spanish and ‘Quill’ – his wife. There is also another theory that the name comes from the words ‘Hua’ – meaning land, ‘Illa’ – meaning beautiful prairie, and ‘Quilca’ -one of the Guyas River’s tributaries where the Quilca tribe lived until dying in the 17th century. Considering this theory, Guayaquil means ‘the land like a beautiful prairie on the land of the Quilcas.’

Upstairs in the museum was some colorful artwork, some colonial-era religious paintings and religious torture tools, plus a little surprise hidden around the corner near some water coolers – shrunken heads! Clearly there must be a bit of an ethical dispute about the heads being on display at the museum as indicated by their less than prominent position. There was even a ‘how to’ poster on the wall showing the process. Awesome.

For New Years Eve we decided to spend the evening on Santa Ana Hill where we would be able to see the fireworks over the whole city. The Santa Ana Hill has a fort built on the very top, as it is a perfect vantage point to see the whole waterfront. There were loads of cafés and bars on the hill, and we knew we could get some drinks and have a fun night. We found one and stayed in it until the 10 second countdown began. Once we heard that we rushed out to see all the colorful paper mache characters everyone had bought being thrown together in a pile. At the stroke of midnight someone lit the pile on fire. Fireworks went off both in the sky and small ones on the ground near the pile. We watched the pile burning until the smoke became too much, then walked back home to the music and the remaining New Years Eve celebration!

The morning of January 2nd, 2015 Colin and I headed to the zoo El Pantanal. We finally made it there after getting on the bus (eventually we figured out it was the wrong bus) and arguing with the bus attendant about our ticket while he refused to allow the bus to stop for us, then finally getting out and changing for another bus back towards the zoo. An extra 30 minutes of hassle on the way. Once we got to the zoo we had to take a guided tour around to see the animals. The cats were absolutely stunning – and so were our pictures of them! One of the female jaguars even came right up to Colin, rolling onto her back and showed her stomach… I think she wanted to be pet by him! The jaguar then came even closer and put her paw up against the side of the cage, trying to play with him and get his attention. It was so cute. Smile