Malecón, Lark on the Move

Travel day! Travel days are always kind of the worst, but the ACTUAL worst is when they start with a pre-6AM wake-up. People aren’t supposed to wake up that early! And you can never get to sleep early enough the night before to offset those lost morning hours because of last-minute packing. Our alarm went off at 4AM. DEAD. That’s how I felt when I opened my eyes. Mom and Dad had an 8AM flight (WHY), so we planned to leave the hotel at 4:45 to get to the airport three hours before. It always feels like overkill, but at the Lima airport, sometimes you really do need it. It turned out that the airport wasn’t busy, but there was a taxi mix-up that thankfully wasn’t disastrous thanks to our time cushion.

At the airport, I said a half-asleep goodbye to Mom and Dad, they headed off to the States. and I spent a few drowsy hours in the airport food court until I could check in for my flight to Ecuador! My final destination was the Galapagos Islands, an archipelago in the Pacific that’s known for its wildlife, but my trip there was a multi-day journey. The plan was to fly to Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador, explore the city for an afternoon, spend the night, meet up with my cousins and aunt and uncle the next morning, and then fly the rest of the way to island #1, San Cristobal!

I guess there’s no hiding that these pictures are from around Christmas…

Guayaquil doesn’t have the best of reputations. I planned my flights to have at least a few hours to wander around the city, and while I was looking for things to do and see, all sorts of articles with titles like “Why You Shouldn’t Visit Guayaquil” came up. Okay, not terribly encouraging. There were also plenty of articles with tips on how to not get robbed or scammed. After reading enough of them to feel like I had a handle on things but not so many that I was totally freaked out, I concluded that I’d be fine as long as I took official taxis to and from the airport (which you should always do anyway), left my valuables behind while walking around, stayed in the tourist parts of town during the day, and maintained a general awareness of my surroundings. Aka be smart. I wasn’t worried.

I don’t have a ton of pictures of the city, unfortunately, because I was a little extra cautious about how much I had my phone out. So we’ll just have to make do with the ones I did take.

Anyway, like I said, Guayaquil (wai-ah-keel) is Ecuador’s largest city. It’s located on the banks of the Guayas River, about 40 miles (64km) upstream from the Gulf of Guayaquil/Pacific Ocean and is the primary port city of Ecuador. According to legend, the name comes from an indigenous chief, Guayas, and his wife, Quil, who lived back when the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the 1530s. They both fought valiantly but were captured. Guayas tricked the Spanish by promising to lead them to great riches if they were released, and instead, he used the opportunity to kill Quil and then himself, preferring death to imprisonment. When the city was first established, it was given the full name of “Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de Guayaquil”, the Very Noble and Very Loyal City of Santiago of Guayaquil, named after Guayas and Quil as well as St. James (Santiago).

Throughout the colonial years, the city was attacked many times by pirates and privateers (which, to my understanding, are basically gentleman pirates… They did the same things as pirates but were commissioned by different governments to attack and plunder their enemies. So, French and English privateers would have attacked Spanish colonies, etc.), and you can still visit a fort at the top of Cerro Santa Ana, a hill in town, and see the cannons that were used to defend the city.

Cerro Santa Ana, a hill that you can climb up for a nice view… if you don’t mind walking up 444 stairs. At the top, there’s a tower that you can climb (just a few more stairs) for a panoramic view of the city and the fort/cannons that I mentioned.

In 1820, Guayaquil declared independence from Spain and operated as an independent province until 1822 when it was forced to join the newly formed Colombia. In 1830, the southern part of Colombia split off to form Ecuador, taking Guayaquil with it. Today, it’s Ecuador’s largest and most important city economically. Most of the country’s international imports and exports pass through its port, and its rapid industrial development has attracted people from rural areas in search of work.

This is part of a monument outside of City Hall that commemorates the secret meetings that let to Guayaquil’s independence. Also, totally unrelated, but the City Hall is called the “Muy Ilustre Municipalidad de Guayaquil” aka the “Most Illustrious Municipality of Guayaquil”. I’m telling you, they really know how to name things in the Very Noble and Very Loyal City of Santiago of Guayaquil.

In recent years, city leadership has prioritized urban renewal and infrastructure projects, working to grow Guayaquil’s commercial districts, tourism to the city, and international business. There have been massive improvements to the roadways, a large pedestrian bridge project to promote tourism to Santay Island (an island on the Guayas River where over a hundred species of birds have been recorded!), updates to public transit, and various projects meant to create a safer and more welcoming downtown area. One such project, lauded as a great success in urban revitalization, is the Malecón 2000, a 1.6-mile-long (2.5km) river walk featuring monuments, river views, playgrounds, gardens, and more.

I landed in Guayaquil around 1PM, took an official taxi to my hostel, and enjoyed a minute of A/C before heading back out into the million-degree heat. I was in “blend” mode, so despite feeling like all of my skin was going to melt off, I wore pants and jammed my phone, room key, and a couple of dollars into the waistband to avoid having to carry a purse. I was on high alert for pickpockets, but everywhere I walked was in the tourist center, there are cops all over, and I didn’t feel unsafe for even a second.

The Malecón is really well-done. I started with a walk through the Malecón Gardens, and it was a bit jarring to see how different the flora is from Lima. It seems like it should be similar… two cities on the Pacific coast, not too far from one another. But Lima is a subtropical desert, and Guayaquil is a tropical savanna which means that for at least part of the year, there’s a lot of rain (the “wet” season in Lima is mostly just misty).

Sometimes I look at things like this and think I should have studied landscape architecture.

I can’t deal with this color explosion. What cool plants!!!

After all of the negative “don’t go there/it’s not worth it” articles I found, I was pleasantly surprised by how many things there are to do in the city. I actually regretted only having a few hours there because I had to contain my sightseeing to a small area, but I have a long list of things to see if I ever find myself there again.

I stuck to the center of town, and another major “must-see” is a plaza called Parque Seminario. It features a statue of Simón Bolívar, one of the main liberators of South America. He and José de San Martín (who, if you recall from our walk through Lima, is one of the liberators celebrated in Peru) had a famous meeting in Guayaquil in 1822 to discuss the future of independent South America… but it sounds like, while they had great respect for one another, they didn’t agree on much beyond liberation. I’m actually not quite sure what the meeting accomplished except for maybe a conclusion of “let’s agree to disagree”.

Anyway, Bolívar has the honor of watching over the famous iguanas of Parque Seminario. Yes, that’s right. Iguanas. They’re native to the area, so while it seems like a weird low-budget zoo, they weren’t brought in for the sake of amusement. That’s just where they live. My gosh, though. It is WEIRD to see a bunch of giant iguanas in the middle of the city. The biggest ones are up to 5’ (1.5m) long!

It seems like a perfectly innocent city plaza until…

I couldn’t quite figure out the relationship between the birds and iguanas. They seem like they just ignore each other completely, even while standing on each other.

I felt like this guy and I had a connection

I took a video of one of them because I think they’re such funny creatures:

The Metropolitan Cathedral of Guayaquil is also on the square, and while I would have loved to go inside, there was a massive crowd out front… I think there was a wedding going on.

It was getting late when I left the park, so I grabbed some dinner and went back to my hostel to relax and prepare myself for the busy week and a half ahead! Next time, off to the Galapagos!!!

Argentina History: 1400s-1800s – follow Argentina through its colonial years and quest for independence

Oxbow Lake – if you enjoyed the funky trees of Guayaquil, you’ll love the unique trees of the Peruvian Amazon!

W Trek Day 3 – hop down to Chile for a hike through Torres del Paine, a national park filled with prehistoric-looking landscapes that seem perfect for our dinosaur-iguana friends

Metropolitan Cathedral of Guayaquil. The original structure was wood, and this one was built in 1924 after it burned down. The inside sounds beautiful, with Gothic ceilings and stained glass windows!

Following our visit to Huaca Pucllana, we enjoyed a leisurely stroll through Miraflores (fancy Lima neighborhood). We walked out toward the water and followed the Malecón, a path along the coast, to Larcomar, a mall built into the Miraflores cliffs. The walk is pretty, with lots of little parks along the way and a nice view of the Pacific Ocean.

The only green part of Lima… They must water this grass A LOT.

This walk is one of the best parts of the city.

Look at those evergreen trees. Are they not the weirdest? They kind of look like those fake “trees” that are actually cell towers… but these are actually trees so they’re just confusing.

They also lend an interesting vibe to this otherwise tropical-looking scene.

Look at this very skinny apartment building!

Lima’s Love Park has a slightly more risque statue than the Love Park in Philly (where they just have a statue of the word “LOVE”).

The park is bordered by this mosaic wall that has quotes about love written on it, along with some names of famous couples (like Romeo and Juliet… people just love to ignore how that love story ended).

That white thing in the cliffs just past the green is Larcomar.

The timing worked out just right. We made it to Larcomar, ate dinner, and walked back to our hotel with a few minutes to spare before Jocelyn and Benjamin’s taxi came to take them to the airport. Saying goodbye to Jocelyn was harder than I expected. I think that I had been ignoring the fact that we were saying goodbye for real this time, unlike when I left Esperanza de Ana a week and a half earlier and said “bye for now/see you in a week”. I had gotten spoiled by staying in one place for a whole year and not having to say constant goodbyes, but reality sank in as I watched the cab drive away. Of course we’ll still be friends, but we’ll never live together again or see each other every day or bond over weekly, Sunday-evening pancakes… It just won’t be the same. And life is full of transitions like that, but the travel life seems to have more of them than normal. But what can you do besides savor where you are and move on when it’s time? I gave myself a second, blinked a few tears away, shoved those feelings down to be dealt with some other time (healthy, I know), and went back into the hotel to rejoin my parents.

The next day was everyone’s last in Peru. My parents had an early morning flight back to the States the following day, and I had a flight to Ecuador! And, it was my birthday! Lima isn’t the first place I would choose to be on my birthday, but it’s kind of hard to complain about being on vacation, no matter where exactly you are.

The adventure for the day was a journey into the historic center of Lima. We took the Metropolitano bus from Miraflores to the center of the city because it’s the best way to avoid dealing with the disaster that is Lima traffic. The pro is that there are dedicated bus lanes, so the drive is relatively painless. The con is that the buses can be suuuper packed. Like “suck in your stomach because otherwise you won’t fit” packed.

We didn’t have a very ambitious plan, for once. I wanted to go on a tour of the Convent of San Francisco, and otherwise, we were just going to walk around the city center and soak in the colonial architecture. After we got off the bus, we took the long way to the main square, the Plaza de Armas, loosely following a walking tour from my guidebook.

We started in the Plaza de San Martín. Named for Peru’s liberator, José de San Martín, it prominently features a large statue of him on horseback. The most interesting feature of the plaza, however, is on the base of the statue where there’s a statue of “Madre Patria”, the symbolic Mother of Peru. She was meant to be wearing a crown of flames, but some of the instructions got lost in non-translation. The word for flame in Spanish is “llama”… and the word for llama in Spanish is “llama”… so she’s wearing a little llama on her head instead. In my opinion, it was a fortunate mistake.

Do you see the little llama on her head? Sorry this is kind of blurry… I zoomed in on my phone camera which is never the best idea.

From there, we took a quick spin through some nearby churches. Since it was around Christmastime, they all had their nativity scenes set up. This is one of my favorite things. Churches go all out, and their displays are always impressive and often entertaining.

This scene was at Iglesia de la Merced, a church built on the site of the first Catholic mass in Lima (1534). The church was built in 1541, and the current building is a few iterations from the original, thanks to the many earthquakes of Lima. Anyway, I took zero pictures of the building because it’s pretty much your standard super-embellished Catholic church. I did, however, take a picture of their nativity display because it’s awesome! They’ve turned it into an experience… there was a functional water feature, twinkle lights, and a multitude of animals: tons of sheep and a few less-traditional attendees like a dolphin and a pelican.

A side chapel that I thought was pretty at the Basilica of Santo Domingo.

And here, of course, is their nativity scene. This one is life-sized and looks like they borrowed some mannequins from a clothing store. I particularly appreciated the rooster in a place of honor beneath the angel and the dramatic lighting.

Finally, this is the nativity at the Iglesia de San Francisco. The bulbous figures add a fresh take to the scene, plus there’s an elephant in front of one of the wise men. The elephant seems a little small compared to the people, but they get extra points for their functional water feature.

We made it to the Plaza de Armas in time for the changing of the guard at the Presidential Palace. Back in the days of the viceroy, when Peru and most of South America were a Spanish colony, the plaza hosted markets, bullfights, and executions. Now, it hosts tourists and protests… it was blocked off when we visited, and someone said that there was supposed to be a labor union protest later in the day.

Everything we read about the changing of the guard basically said that there’s no reason to go out of your way for it, but if you happen to be in the area around the right time, you might as well stop by to check it out. I think I’d agree. I mean, it’s about what I expected. There’s a band and a lot of marching and people doing high kicks while playing their instruments. They probably could have done it in 10 minutes max, but it went on for something like half an hour (though I don’t really know for sure because we didn’t stay the whole time).

The Lima Cathedral and, to the left, the Archbishop’s Palace of Lima. The wooden balconies on the Archbishop’s Palace were very common back in the day, but there aren’t many remaining the city. Lima has been rebuilt multiple times due to earthquakes.

The band playing in the middle of the square. Also, I’ll never get used to Christmas in the summer… that Christmas tree felt VERY out of place as we practically melted in the summer sun.

The marching band entering the gates of the Presidential Palace.

Waiting for the changing of the guard to start

From there, we went to the Basilica and Convent of San Francisco for the one tour I insisted we do. I had been there before with teams from EA, and I wanted my parents to see it. The building has some really cool architectural features, and, most famously, the tour also takes you through the catacombs beneath the church. You’re not allowed to take pictures inside, so I’m not going to include any (though, admittedly, I did sneak a few for my personal “just for my memory” collection), but it’s about what you’d expect. Lots of bones, organized by type and arranged into bizarre and sometimes disturbing displays.

Personally, my favorite parts are not in the catacombs. I am obsessed with 1. The library. It’s totally a dream library, with a balcony level and fancy-looking spiral staircases and about 25,000 antique texts, and 2. The cedar, Moorish-style ceiling over one of the staircases. It is majestic. You can see a few pictures, including one of the ceiling, part of the library, and some catacomb skulls and bones, on their website.

Our final stop was a nearby park that contains the ruins of the 17^th– century city wall! When the Spanish arrived in 1535, the city of Lima was nothing more than a loose grouping of indigenous settlements. The Spanish built it up, implementing a street grid and building colonial-style buildings. In 1684, They added a city wall around the perimeter to protect against pirates. By the end of the 19^th century, the wall had been mostly torn down to accommodate the expanding city, and the fragments in the park are the most substantial portions of the wall that remain today. There are also the remains of houses from the 17^th century that were built into the wall. It’s pretty cool!

I’m glad they kept some of the old walls! Though this park could probably use a few more trees, right??

Here’s one of the old houses that were built into the wall

Check out that driveway! (or whatever it is) It’s quite the work of art.

From there, we made the trek back to our hotel in Miraflores. We had a pretty rough time catching a ride back. It took forever for our bus to come, and when one finally did, we had to sardine ourselves into the solid wall of people blocking the door. It should have been physically impossible for us to fit, but Dad said, “Heck no, that bus isn’t leaving without us,” pushed Mom and me until the crowd gave way, and then forced his way in as well. Sometimes, that’s how you’ve gotta do it! We definitely got an authentic public transit experience.

That night, Dina, one of my friends from Esperanza de Ana, and her daughter joined us for my birthday dinner (at Pizza Hut… where else?), and afterward, my parents and I spent some time organizing and packing to get ready for our departures the next day. Mom and Dad were headed back to the States, but I still had another month and a half of traveling ahead! I did my best to sort out what I wanted them to take home vs. what I still needed for my travels and was super thankful that I didn’t have to take EVERYTHING with me. My parents took home a 50-pound suitcase brick (plus some other stuff scattered throughout their suitcases), and I was left with a hiking backpack that still had some extra space. Perfect! (That makes repacking easier because you don’t have to be as precise in order for everything to fit.)

Next time, we’re off to Ecuador!

Huaca Pucllana – go back to Lima’s roots with a visit to this 5th-century pyramid

Barranco – walk around Barranco, one of Lima’s trendiest neighborhoods

Buenos Aires – hop across the continent to explore another South American capital city, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Cusco and Qorikancha – compare the desert landscape of Lima to the highlands of Cusco

Ica – embrace the Peruvian desert with a visit to Ica, a city surrounded by sand dunes

Guayaquil

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