Day 10 - Guayaquil

Saturday, 23 August 2014

I had the best sleep in 9 days, safe and stable on dry land. I went for a guided walking tour in the afternoon around the city of Guayaquil. 

Guayaquil obtained its independence on 9 October 1820 almost without bloodshed when group of civilians, supported by soldiers from the "Granaderos de Reserva", a battalion quartered in Guayaquil and led by Jose Joaquin de Olmedo, a poet, overwhelmed the resistance of the Royalist guards and arrested the Spanish authorities. Guayaquil declared independence from Spain, becoming Provincia Libre de Guayaquil, and  Jose Joaquin de Olmedo was named Jefe Civil (Civilian Chief) of Guayaquil. There is a square portraying sculptures of Jose Joaquin de Olmedo and his conspirators. The Guayaquil airport is named after him.

On July 26, 1822, Jose de San Martin and Simon Bolivar held a famous conference in Guayaquil to plan for the independence of Spanish South America. There is a sculpture of this too. 

We also visited the Independence Park, there is a statue of lady liberty holding a torch, apparently the light of independence will never go off, even if there is a black out that torch is attached to a generator and it will light throughout the night, because the light of independence never go off! Also a park known as Iguana Park because it's full of iguanas. These are the green land iguanas which are apparently the ancestors of the marine and land iguanas in the Galápagos Islands. They certainly look alike.

We also saw the River Guayas where the city of Guayaquil was first built around. There is also a statue of Antonio Jose de Sucre, one of the independence conspirators, and the Ecuador currency was named after him before it changed to the Dollar in 1999. Lastly we went to a place called Santa Ana, which used to be a place where drug addicts and prostitutes lived, and it was in a bad part of the neighbourhood. Then the mayor decided to  clean up the whole place, and the best part was that the people who owned houses there were forced to stay in them and were forbidden to sell them. Some have turned it into shops and bars, and it looks like a nice cultural hub. We climbed 444 steps where a picturesque view of the city of Guayaquil could be seen.

There are filthy rich people living in Ecuador, in houses worth USD 22 million, and all of this is beyond the River Guayas. The guide told us the story about a very rich lady named Isabella something who owns numerous lands which she has built into condominiums, hospitals, hotels and office blocks, and it appears that all she touches turns to gold. Anyway, the story is that her husband cheated on her and they divorced and all that. Then her daughter married a tennis player, and he was cheating on her with a famous Ecuadorian model, and the mother found out about this and one day told her son-in-law, "I am a chuleta (woman who was cheated on - not sure of spelling) but my daughter will not be a chuleta, she will be a widow. Do you understand?" Power to the rich, yay.

Today it is a city of about 2.75 million people. It gets cold at night. This city is much bigger than Quito, although Quito is the capital of Ecuador. I liked Quito better.