Guayaquil, Ecuador: Iguana Poop

We is cheap. So upon booking travel to South America, we took the cheap option which required exactly 10 separate legs of flights. Surprisingly, in a never before recorded moment of history, we had exactly zero delays, bag lossages, or flight shenanigans through the trip. Thank you karma. I knew that the universe owed me for those two consecutive ACL tears.

Our first big stop upon the start of el vacaye was Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador. [PS, I do not speak Spanish, so I figured that I could take any word in English, add an el (--the) before it and an occasional -e to the end of it and wahlah, guaranteed to be Spanish. It worked magnificently. ] Here we met up with our Spanish speaking hosts, Tom's sister Susan and her husband Jeremy who have been living in Ecuador for the past 1 year and 8 months for the Peace Corp. We spent a day exploring el malecon (ocean boulevard), eating amazing sea food, searching in vain for real coffee (apparently, Nestea instant is the norm there...argh, the sacrifices you have made Sus&Jer) and visiting the iguana park.

The iguana park is a nice little park situated in the middle of the city where apparently iguanas have lived for many years. There animals are territorial so when the city built around their home, they decided to stay. Now they are old and ugly, but somehow survive in the middle of the city. Upon strolling through the lovely park, we also learned that they live high in trees and also light to shit large amounts of excrement on unsuspecting tourists. Tom took one for the team in one of the funniest spectacles ever. I may have cried if it happened to me, but we just laughed at him. We drank some cheap beer found all over Ecuador known as Pilsner, we ate some delicious plantains, and we had an enjoyable 18 hours before heading back to the airport for our flight to Peru.

This city is one of the newer ones in Ecuador with much evidence of new money being spent alongside the old more rundown areas.

Siblings. This city is on the coast so you are looking at the Pacific Ocean River Guayas. [Thanks Cecilia]

What are those black shapes in the tree?

Self explainatory. Hehe.