Guayaquil, Ecuador
February 8, 2007
S 02.11.478
W 079.52.930
We left the beautiful, relaxing beach at Montanita on Wednesday and headed back on the bus to the hustle and bustle of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city.
First, I want to take a few paragraphs to give the beach at Montanita some justice. The beach in front of the place we stayed stretches to the South for at least 10km, all of which you can walk during low tide. The water isn’t the turquoise blue you see in postcard pictures, but it is a green-blue color. The beach is pretty clean thanks to an education program and the locals seem to take a lot of pride in keeping the white sands clean.
We swam/body surfed in the lukewarm, almost too warm, water during the day, mostly during low tide. When the tide started to come in, the water belonged to the surfers, who headed into the water in mass, and we promptly exited the water—you are only asking to get hurt if you stay in the water with the surfers. After we got out of the water we would play a little Frisbee to dry-off, and then head to the patio where we would watch the surfers, drink 750ml Brahma (a local beer) for a $1.50 each, and wait for the most beautiful sunsets we have ever seen to date. We repeated this “exhausting” exercise for five straight days…
Our time at the beach accomplished its goal—time to decompress after many months of getting ready for our trip—we were so relaxed, we didn’t want to leave. However, we realized it was only our first week of the trip and we have many more great things (and beaches) to see along the way.
We headed back to Guayaquil with enough time to accomplish one thing—do laundry. We had a couple of other small things we needed to do in the city such as drop some stuff in the mail and buy a new USB memory stick since Marc “decided” to go swimming with the last one, but our main goal was to wash the stinky, sandy clothes from the beach.
Our Lonely Planet guide (last updated in 2003) said most places specialize in dry cleaning, not laundry, except for one. The one was very close to our hotel—perfect! We wrote the address down and scoped the whole thing out after our arrival on Wednesday evening. We found the location, but it was closed, and a revolving metal door was pulled down in front of the business blocking access. The address didn’t have any signage on the outside, so we figured we would just come back the following morning.
We set out on our laundry quest on Thursday morning, with bags of stinky clothes in hand. The nondescript building we found the night before is now a small office space with about 20 computers and a guard armed with what appeared to be an automatic Uzi, wearing a bullet-proof vest, standing in front. (Don’t panic, most businesses have an armed guard protecting them from the city hoodlums). We decided it would probably be best not to ask the guard about what happened to the lavanderia and returned to our hotel, bags of soiled clothes in hand. We figured we would find another lavanderia while completing some of our other tasks for the day. We did check with the concierge in the hotel to see if they could help us with our bags of reeking clothes. The concierge pointed us to the ridiculously expensive hotel service ($2.50 per t-shirt) and advised us that there isn’t anyone in the area that does just laundry. There has to be someplace, we said to each other.
We walked around the city for at least two hours sightseeing, looking at USB sticks, mailing things, and we never found a single laundry facility. Defeated, we returned to our hotel, where it was nice and cool, and stayed out of the city for rest of the day.
Not too much else to say about Guayaquil… Of course we know there will be other nondescript cities like Guayaquil (hopefully with laundry facilities). We just hope we get the sense in advance to get in and out as quickly as possible.
Next stop… Chile.
February 8, 2007
S 02.11.478
W 079.52.930
We left the beautiful, relaxing beach at Montanita on Wednesday and headed back on the bus to the hustle and bustle of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city.
First, I want to take a few paragraphs to give the beach at Montanita some justice. The beach in front of the place we stayed stretches to the South for at least 10km, all of which you can walk during low tide. The water isn’t the turquoise blue you see in postcard pictures, but it is a green-blue color. The beach is pretty clean thanks to an education program and the locals seem to take a lot of pride in keeping the white sands clean.
We swam/body surfed in the lukewarm, almost too warm, water during the day, mostly during low tide. When the tide started to come in, the water belonged to the surfers, who headed into the water in mass, and we promptly exited the water—you are only asking to get hurt if you stay in the water with the surfers. After we got out of the water we would play a little Frisbee to dry-off, and then head to the patio where we would watch the surfers, drink 750ml Brahma (a local beer) for a $1.50 each, and wait for the most beautiful sunsets we have ever seen to date. We repeated this “exhausting” exercise for five straight days…
Our time at the beach accomplished its goal—time to decompress after many months of getting ready for our trip—we were so relaxed, we didn’t want to leave. However, we realized it was only our first week of the trip and we have many more great things (and beaches) to see along the way.
We headed back to Guayaquil with enough time to accomplish one thing—do laundry. We had a couple of other small things we needed to do in the city such as drop some stuff in the mail and buy a new USB memory stick since Marc “decided” to go swimming with the last one, but our main goal was to wash the stinky, sandy clothes from the beach.
Our Lonely Planet guide (last updated in 2003) said most places specialize in dry cleaning, not laundry, except for one. The one was very close to our hotel—perfect! We wrote the address down and scoped the whole thing out after our arrival on Wednesday evening. We found the location, but it was closed, and a revolving metal door was pulled down in front of the business blocking access. The address didn’t have any signage on the outside, so we figured we would just come back the following morning.
We set out on our laundry quest on Thursday morning, with bags of stinky clothes in hand. The nondescript building we found the night before is now a small office space with about 20 computers and a guard armed with what appeared to be an automatic Uzi, wearing a bullet-proof vest, standing in front. (Don’t panic, most businesses have an armed guard protecting them from the city hoodlums). We decided it would probably be best not to ask the guard about what happened to the lavanderia and returned to our hotel, bags of soiled clothes in hand. We figured we would find another lavanderia while completing some of our other tasks for the day. We did check with the concierge in the hotel to see if they could help us with our bags of reeking clothes. The concierge pointed us to the ridiculously expensive hotel service ($2.50 per t-shirt) and advised us that there isn’t anyone in the area that does just laundry. There has to be someplace, we said to each other.
We walked around the city for at least two hours sightseeing, looking at USB sticks, mailing things, and we never found a single laundry facility. Defeated, we returned to our hotel, where it was nice and cool, and stayed out of the city for rest of the day.
Not too much else to say about Guayaquil… Of course we know there will be other nondescript cities like Guayaquil (hopefully with laundry facilities). We just hope we get the sense in advance to get in and out as quickly as possible.
Next stop… Chile.
