Day 1 - Guayaquil

Wow. What a day. I left Jill in LA around 2:00 this morning and flew to San Jose, Costa Rica, Quito (the capital of Ecuador) and then Guayaquil (Ecuador's largest city.) I'm here in Guayaquil at a lovely Bed & Breakfast place run by a really sweet Ecuadorean lady and her family. I arrived at 4pm and have been running around like crazy ever since. Really. Ellen, my host, gave me some maps and told me about some parks and monuments and gardens etc. I should see and told me how to get there. So I set out. It turned out not to be as easy a sightseeing adventure as I'd anticipated. It was certainly an adventure though. I got soooo lost. The bus system here is very confusing and my rusty Spanish wasn't helping me too much with sorting it out. So I got off at a few wrong stops. Some too early, some too late, some completely outside the actual city of Guayaquil. But I made it back and I'm still alive and well so that's what counts I suppose. And in the process I saw a lot of parts of Guayaquil that I'd never have seen if I knew what I was doing.
The city reminds me a lot of New York actually. Big, loud, insanely fast-paced and totally energizing and fun or stressful and terrifying depending on your mood. My mood changed a bit throughout the day so I got to experience both sides : ) It's even structured similar to New York with it's avenidas running one way and calles running perpendicular and it's very own brown river! And the traffic makes Manhattan look like a suburb. There are no lines on the road. It's an absolute free-for-all. The buses usually stop for women and children but for able-bodied men they pretty much just slow down. I knew the buses would be an adventure when I asked Ellen where the bus stops on her street and she said (paraphrased translation) "Oh, anywhere along here really. That tree is usually good."
The other thing I've noticed about the city, again like NYC, it has a reputation for being very impersonal and dangerous. The big city, muggers at every turn, anyone who can will screw you over, try not to look like a tourist. The literature from the hospital had a long packet of precautions to take, places to avoid, and it's not that that's bad advice. It's important to be aware and on your guard and to avoid situations where people can take advantage of you but the people in the city are just people and the city is just a city. This seems painfully obvious now that I'm writing it, but it really struck me. Other than the language shift, which is definitely difficult, especially since Ecuadorians tend to pronounce Ss like Hs (Son treh ehcuelah en ehta ciudad...that's not a real statihtic but you get the point) WOW that was a massive digression. Anywhom... other than the language shift, not much adjustment is needed to understand this place. People are generally nice and happy to help. And even when I was at my most lost and completely vulnerable and tired and low on options and in the middle of a "sketchy" neighborhood three strangers helped me out and got me safely back to my house despite my inability to provide them with useful directions or a clear statement of the problem.

Well that was a longer post than I'd anticipated. Pictures will be up soon but not tonight. I'm exhausted. PEACE.