Ecuador - Guayaquil

Legend has it that the name Guayaquil came from two indigenous people, Guayas and his wife Quil, who were symbols of the resistance movement to fight to the death rather than give up to the Spanish conquerors. There is a huge statue of them together in one of the main streets. The full name of the city is Santiago de Guayaquil.

There is a conversation about which of the two cities, Quito or Guayaquil, is the biggest. Quito is the capital, but Guayaquil is the industrial and commercial center. It makes sense as the main port is in Guayaquil, and it is on sea level making it easier to construct both housing and business properties. So it turns out that both is the biggest, it all depends on what you measure. Quito is the largest city based on the area it occupies, and Guayaquil has the largest population.

That settled, we liked both cities. Quito is no doubt the most impressive nature wise, and Guayaquil felt more energetic and industrial. We spent a day with a taxi driver who took us around to see some of the main sites. We started off on the malecon, the waterfront, which is a quite new development with restaurants and a promenade on the edge of the Guayas river. There is also a museum that holds three exhibitions in one, two of the cities football teams have a section each, and then the most famous musician/singer Julio Jaramillo. In addition to being a great singer, he was very active having children. No less that 27! He was married 5 times, and he died at 45.

We climbed all the 444 steps to the lighthouse on Santa Ana hill. The views were lovely from there.

One of the highlights was to visit a central park where iguanas and pigeons live in great harmony with humans. We enjoyed seeing the commercial part of the city, it was clean and orderly, with wide streets and enough space for everybody. At the end we even managed to get a speech on the development of the city fire brigade. We saw some of the old fire engines, some of which were imported from England. Here we have another entertaining fact from Ecuador. They name their stews "secos". The Spanish word seco means dry, and for us it was a mystery why a stew was named seco. It turns out that when the English came to Ecuador, they wanted to eat a second dish as part of dinner, which they preferred to be a stew. So they asked for a "second" and the locals named it seco. It is frequently part of breakfast!