Guayaquil

We spent 2 nights in Guayaquil and we think that was more than enough.

The first night, before flying to the Galapagos, we slept at the Tangara hotel, conveniently located 10 minutes from the airport, where, after long negotiation they kindly agreed to store most of our luggage and the bike

There is not much to say about Guayaquil.

The highlight of the town is the Malecon 2000, 3kms of river side walk fully refurbished in 2001.

We are told that Guayaquil is a masterpiece of regeneration........I just can’t think of how it must have appeared before.

On a positive note, in spite of the traffic and the size of the town it is fairly easy to navigate it, due to a simple one way system and progressive denomination of the roads.

We wish we had the time and the courage to visit the barrio Sant’Ana, a colourful neighbourhood north of Malecon 2000. This little quarter on a hill surrounding the lighthouse is made of colourful houses.

Here’s is a picture from distance.

In Guayaquil we found abundance of electronic shops and plenty of statues but strangely enough we could not find a single restaurant, even though we walked around for over 6 hours.

Eventually as we began to starve we stepped into one of the chain hotels in the centre (the Man Ging).

Not only the food was good and the service was excellent, but we also discovered that 1 room, in this brand new 4 stars hotel only cost $69 per night, only $19 more than our shabby hotel (The Tangara) in the suburbs next to the airport (with airplanes pretty much landing in our bed!!)

Unfortunately we still had o go back to our “hotel” where we spent the night before going to the Galapagos, but we didn’t miss the opportunity to upgrade to the Man Ging on the day we came back to Guayaquil to collect our luggage and bike from the Tangara Hotel.

Shabby room for $50 at the Tangara

VS

stilish room at the Man Ging for $69