I still woke up at 5:30 am the next morning and waited for David to wake up. We had a nice breakfast at the hotel and headed out to the Simon Bolivar promenade on the Malecon 2000.
Our main destination of the day was the lighthouse in Cerro Santa Ana; we arrived at the foot of Santa Ana hill and started to climb up the steps throughout the colorful neighborhood of Las Penas. Well, 444 steps later, we reached the summit and its landmark: a blue and white lighthouse built in 2002 on a 17th century fort to honor the New Guayaquil. There was also a small colonial chapel built in 1548 with local materials and featuring 19 stained glass windows. Some workers were putting a fresh coat of paint on the security rail around the plaza.
Of course I had to climb the 52 more spiral stairs leading to the top of the lighthouse and enjoyed the panoramic view over the city, the river and the colorful Santa Ana houses.
Then, we made our way down the hill and walked through the historic street called Calle Nima Pompilio Llona after a famous Ecuadorian poet; it was considered the oldest street of the city with houses dating more than 400 years.
We continued our wandering through the Las Peñas neighborhood and soon arrived on the other side of the hill near the river which had been recently rebuilt with modern buildings and offices. It was deserted but we found the Sweet & Coffee shop and sat down for a refreshing ice coffee and a short visit at the small in-house Museum of Coffee. Unfortunately, all the information was in Spanish so we missed most of the details.
We were walking back towards our hotel when we found a pedestrian zone with small restaurants so we stopped for some Mexican food.
Back at the hotel, we relaxed a bit and called our respective families who had to deal with funerals in the US and France (David’s uncle and one of my parents childhood friend had both died while we were in the Galápagos).
I went back to the colonial district to have a closer look at the old buildings and monuments and observed the locals going and coming.
For dinner, we went to La Pepe de Oro located in the Grand Hotel de Guayaquil just behind the Cathedral and we enjoyed respectively our steak with fries and goat stew. Our table was facing a pool at the back of the hotel and a gigantic iguana…in ceramic. Yes, they were following us everywhere during this trip!
We were told by many people to be careful in Guayaquil as it could be dangerous at night in certain areas. But we were in the more touristic colonial district and decided to go for a digestive walk on the Malecon promenade. There were security guards at each entrance, days and nights, and it was frequented by families, so certainly not a dangerous place to be. The weather was very pleasant so we ended up walking until the end of the promenade where an amusement park with several attractions was located. One of them was a Ferris Wheel and I read that the view was great at night; so we bought a ticket, boarded a cabin and rotated for about 15 minutes. The nightly view of Cerro Santa Ana was indeed beautiful and we enjoyed the ride; but we realized that we were the only ones in the wheel which closed right after we completed our rotation at 8:20 pm!
We walked back to our hotel and called it a night. Another great walking day with over 21,600 steps as we did not take any public transportation to wander around.
Time to smell the roses...Sur les Chemins du Monde... 