Day 2 in Guayaquil

We survived the first night in Guayaquil, even the second night, despite the sketchy elevator. On our second day here we explored and explored and explored. We walked the entire town it seemed like. We started by going to the museo de antropologico. We received a guided tour...in English...that was very interesting. The girl showed us the types of pottery, tools, ceremonial masks, chairs and vessels. It was a great tour. We also say a bunch of jewelry, nose and face rings and ceremonial face plates. None of the pieces were complete because in the 80s someone had broken into the museum and stole some of the artifacts and then set fire. So many of the metal items began to melt. The whole excursion cost us a dollar each.

We then walked around the town through many of the parks, parque centenario, which was great with all of the statues and surroundings. Next stop on our walking tour was the waterfront. We walked the whole thing...approx. 30 blocks one way, which we did multi0ple times today.

Then we went to the Museo municipal. We got in free for being tourist I guess. These people did not like us. We were in one of the rooms and my sunglasses were on top of my head. This is a museum...I sneezed and my glasses flew of and broke. Hearing something break in a museum is not usually a good sign. Everything was fine, the guard just got a little jumpy. This museum we had a self guided tour. My spanish isn´t that great but we picked out some key words. This museum had many of the dame types of artifacts as the other. This one had more paintings and artifacts from the leaders of Ecuador. We went upstairs and there were contemporary art pieces and real human shrunken heads!! It was so weird. They were smaller than dolls heads! they had hair and all their facial openings, nose, eyes, mouth were all stitched up. It was bizarre. Then I stupidly followed Sarah into a room, which she thought was a movie. I then followed her closer to the front! Big mistake on my part. It was not a movie. It was a guest lecture by some men from the geology department at the college. There were maybe six people in there besides us. (probably student trying to get credit) As the man started talking we had no idea what he was saying. Sarah wanted to get up and leave but I made her stay for a pause or a break because its rude to leave in the middle of a presentation. Well...laughing uncontrollably in a presentation is rude too. Sarah started laughing because we had no idea what was going on...I then laughed at her..and then neither one of us could stop. It was horrible. It got worse when a lady working for the museum came up and asked us what was so funny about what the man was saying. Sarah didn{t hear her and I told her that we were so confused because we couldn´t translate fast enough and we were trying to keep up. I appologized and we waited for the break until we left..still having a giggle fest. We felt so bad, but it was a great and amusing story.

Then we decided to walk the waterfront again, all the way to old town called las peñas. This was the old part of Guayaquil that had multicolored houses on the hillside housing the light house. Long ago the city was attacked by pirates. We walked up to the light house...500 plus stairs and had a great view of the city. But it was hot and I was sweating and it was nasty, but worth it.

We then walked back to our hotel along the waterfront and had a smoothie then took showers. But before going to bed, we were watching our English channel on t.v. with Spanish subtitles. Sarah saw a UNICEF commercial with a boy and a llama and a caption saying "Llama ahora" she was excited for learning some Spanish and said she new what it meant..."Llama now" I laughed at her for a while and then told her that "Llama ahora" actually meant "call now". It was amusing. Thats how the trip has gone so far... amusing. I didn´t think we would have to rely on my being the interpreter. Anyone who knew me back in Spanish class is probably scared now. But it is definitely on me, because Sarah isn´t with the Spanish yet. She also warned me about her bad sense of direction. Her friends even warned me about her bad sense of direction. Somehow I didn´t believe them, but they were all right. I don´t know how many times we either get to our hotel or leave our hotel and she consistently walks the wrong way. She has redeemed herself at times when I have been turned around, but again...its amusing.

So day two consisted of museums, walking a ton, blisters and ridiculous amounts of sweat. What a great time.

01/22/08