Tuesday, November 1, 2016: our first full day aboard the Silversea Explorer

We flew Saturday from Dallas, to Miami, and on to Guayaquil, not bad flights as flights go and we landed before I got around to sleeping in spite of the late hour.  We didn’t lay our heads on our pillows, however, until after 3 AM Sunday morning.  Our enthusiastic and cheerful guide Maybell and our driver Antonio had met us at the airport, settled us into the hotel and then set the time for our tour of Guayaquil the next day—blessedly not too early.  We gamely rose, breakfasted and had already explored the Municipal Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul and its adjacent park just across the street before they picked us up.  The park, dedicated to the Liberator Simon Bolivar is also known as the Park of the Iguanas because of the large number of the giant lizards who live there.  Full of people freely petting and feeding the iguanas as well as the squirrels and pigeons, I was wondering whether their beds are lice-infested or whether these creatures are cleaner than the ones we have in American parks.  One lady was caressing a large squirrel and letting it crawl all over her head and hair.  This gave me the willies.   

I'm having technical difficulties as usual, and these pictures are meant to be posted below the ones of the Iguana park and the Cathedral.  After we were picked up by the vivacious Maybell, we drove through Guayaquil's Flower Market where these sweet ladies posed for a picture.  Ecuador is the world's third largest producer of cut flowers, 73% of which are roses and there are flower stands and flowers everywhere in profusion.

We toured an amazing cemetery which dates back to 1842 and considered one of the most beautiful in South America. We have been to Evita's burial place in Buenos Aires and this certainly is more beautiful.   It seems to cover miles of territory and is home to elaborate mausoleums made of Carrera marble, classical monuments, endless rows of columbaria and simple graves which appear to have been hand carved by the families.   

Then we drove to the highest point in Guayaquil, Santa Ana Hill, where we had been warned by Maybell that visiting it involved walking up 444 steps, but that it was worth it for the magnificent panoramic view of the city.  Along the way, a couple of us threatened to abandon the effort, but we all made it and we were thrilled that we had hung in there.  The climb itself is very interesting, the stairs flanked with pastel painted shops, apartments and restaurants (though no place to stop for a glass of wine), and our reward at the top is a charming plaza with a lighthouse and small colonial chapel. The 360 degree view includes the delightful colonial neighborhood called Las Penas, shown below, as well as the favelas along the hillside which are the colorful symbol of Guayaquil.  You can see the port with its sophisticated boardwalk called the Malencon and of course everything is ablaze with bougainvillea, roses and flowers whose names I will never know.   

You can't see it but step # 158 is the next group of steps.  Each step is numbered 1-444, a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it.  

Don and Gwenna walking up the final group of steps