Guayaquil

Guayaquil is the largest city in Ecuador, and also its commercial capital. We had originally thought that we'd take longer than two weeks to get here from Lima, and so would only have a day or so before heading off to the Galápagos, but we made good enough time to spend four nights in town.

​The weather is tropical - it rained most afternoons - and the city isn't terribly exciting, but it is a good base for tedious logistics. We bought UV-proof rashguards for snorkelling, and trekked out to a dive shop to see whether they could rent or sell a dive mask with prescription optics, as our agent for the Galápagos had apparently never heard of such a thing. Alas, they're only available by special order from the USA, so we spent an afternoon tracking down an optician and negotiating the purchase of some contact lenses instead. 

Parque Seminario is full of iguanas.

The best thing about going to Guayaquil was actually the journey there. From Cuenca, there are two bus routes. The shorter one (about 3.5 hours) goes through El Cajas National Park, climbing to a pass with spectacular views at 4,100m before descending through rain forest to sea level.

Logistics: we had no trouble finding taxis in Guayaquil. Prices around $3-5 depending on distance. Meters don't seem to be a thing, so ask your driver how much it is before you set off. 

Food: nothing terribly special. Susan had a powerful urge for KFC one day, but it was sadly unimpressive. I thought that half the point of these chains was that they're completely consistent all around the world. We had a decent hole-in-the-wall chifa for lunch one day. The servings were absolutely enormous: two main courses would have easily fed three hungry people.