Day 350 What a Night

Friday 24 July 2009

We spend the day in Guayaquil—a fine day it is too with sunshine and soft clouds that look like white cotton candy tangled up in blue. The city is a delta city and has the ripe aroma of a low tide tossed like a salad with that big city smell of too many people, too many buses, and too many iguanas—well . . . maybe not the latter. We walk across the street to the park because we see lots of people standing around while several guys unload stuff from a van with a local TV channel advertised boldly on the side; they’re shooting a news segment live from the park and we stroll around the many iguanas sunning themselves to watch the action. The newscasters look like TV people everywhere in the world—heavily made-up, understatedly over-dressed, perfectly mis-coiffed, with blindingly-white big-teeth smiles. The iguanas are not impressed.

We tour Catedral Católica which is across the street from the iguanas with architecture that is surprisingly subdued for such a large city—more than two million people. We head to Malecón 2000 to see the south end where there are artesanos and we make like tourists; Teri buys gold turtle ear rings and I buy a white Panama hat with a black band. We find an ATM, get cash, and taxi to Ormeño to buy bus tickets for our all-day trip home tomorrow ($35 each).

That night after a fabulous fabada asturiana, a Spanish bean stew with ham and chorizo, at a Basque restaurant, La Tasca Vasca, and served by a black-haired, dark-eyed, middle-aged waitress showing ample cleavage who channels ‘sexy gypsy-woman,’ we follow a huge crowd in the streets to the esplanade where the celebration of Guayaquil’s founding is in full swing—it’s about 9:00. There is a stage setup in the middle of the first intersection we come to at the esplanade and we stop to listen to Latin American rock and roll blaring into the night from four young men with electric guitars and drums—they are good and the crowd is really rocking, but I see another stage setup at the next major intersection to the north and we head that way. The crowd is thick and the going is slow and when we get there one woman is singing to electronic backup music—not good! We watch and listen for one song then push on to check out the free opera farther to the north, but the crowd this way is thicker, and by the time we get to where we can actually see the stage, the opera is over—damn! Back the way we came hoping to listen to some music before we retire but both stages are empty; the sidewalks are still swarming with entire families, including grandma and grandpa and children, looking like little aged commuters at rush hour, but there’s no music to be heard. Teri is disappointed with my bad judgment; the grass was not greener—should have stayed with the first band.

We head back to our room and finish off Guayaquil’s celebration with channel surfing—whoohoo! Nothing good on the tube so we read until lights off. What a night!