Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Ecuador- Part 1





Well folks here we are back in Peru and César is half dead. It really isn´t fun that his immune system sucks so much. Anyway, now we have to go to the clinic 3 times a day, and there is no public health system here...wonderful. I start work tomorrow again so I guess he will have to fend for himself. At least he is getting better. We arrived here on Monday and went straight to the doctor. He had a cold when we left which changed into a raving fever and has now developed into infections and he can´t speak and only drinks liquids like soup and porridge (gross). But anyway, the trip!
Well Ecuador was pretty cool! Not difficult to enter Ecuador illegally though, on the bus they said, anyone who wants to go through customs, now is your chance. Like as if there was a choice? Weird. Some busses just went zooming on through. The river gives you an idea of what it was like arriving- wet! Raining hard! In Ecuador there are a LOT of bananas. Acres and acres for hours! You can see a bit of that in the photo.
Well, passing the border we went straight to Guayaquil. In Ecuador the money is American Dollars, so everything seems more expensive but actually the whole trip including everything from Cajamarca and back cost less than 350$ so that isn´t bad. We pretty much went straight from Cajamarca to Guayaquil so we were tired because thats about 24 hours of straight bus rides. Luckily I am getting good at sleeping on busses though so I was less tired than César who had a fever by then. It was sweltering hot in Guayaquil so we stripped down and went exploring. We had broken out a sweat within 1 minute of walking- well I had, César was already sweating heavily due to his fever. We had heard about the iguana park and wanted to go, but was asked a local and he had no idea what we were talking about! We kept walking until we got the mall. I should explain, the taxi driver from the bus terminal to the hostal told us that Guayaquil had the biggest mall in South America. I was surprised because, you know, Ecuador is not one of the richest countries around here and we had never heard of it. Then it ocurred to me that the driver had probably never left Ecuador. The mall was not that big, nor very impressive. I guess about 2 times the length of Brandon mall. I ate cake. It was great, better than the disgusting lunch we had. Peruvian food is better folks!
Further proof of this fact: we went back to the hostal for a nap and later wanted to go out for a good meal (we didn´t eat much on the busses at all). I asked the man at the reception desk where we could out for a decent meal and he looked at me aghast. ¨What, at this time of night?¨ I might add, that it was 9:30 p.m. ¨Well, I´d suggest KFC.¨
And that ladies and gentlemen is what Ecuadorians consider a decent meal. They are obsessed with it, everywhere you go there are loads and its like McDonalds in extreme! Anyway, after walking for 40 minutes we found a restaurant in an expensive hotel. I do not kid you, EVERYTHING was closed! It was a dead city. I don´t know how it got compared to New York, this city sleeps before 9! And AHHHH COCKROACHES! Big cockroaches all over the pavement at night! I had to dance around to avoid them. César thought I was being ridiculous but I didnt want them crawling up my legs! It is weird because the population of Guayaquil is about 2 million. Maybe we were in the wrong part...but we were in the city centre!
The other picture is an awesome tree.
Anyway, after the mall we walked around and went to a museum. I went to tourist information and asked what there was to do. They made me sign a guest book and then gave me... a map of Guayaquil. Not exactly what I had in mind. But there you go. Then we stumbled across the iguana park. It was cool! They are tame and they are everywhere. César got an awesome picture of one which you can see here!
Well, after that we were pretty bored of Guayaquil and couldn´t take the heat so we headed on to Salinas...but that´s a blog for another day! Better go and see to César!
It´s raining in Cajamarca, but at least we have escaped the heat!

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