Guayaquil market

We were so glad that we got a chance to just walk around in Guayaquil for a while. It certainly has it's own style, weather, people and food. It's a big city, and the morning we walked around by ourselves was busy. The neighborhoods/streets we passed were of all different kinds. We'd pass the office supply part of town, the furniture part of town...as if you were moving though different stores!

We were off wandering and went into one of the markets, which is like going to a grocery store, since there are vendors that sell everything you'd find...there were produce sections, sausage sections, household utensils, guinea pigs...everything that you'd find in a grocery back home.

In the 'Greens' section, the smells were so intense. I wish there were a way to share that smell. Everything smelled so clean, strong, healthy, and just so...green.

One part of the market had the live animals. We had fun asking which were pets and which were for eating. Sometimes it was hard to guess. There were doves, chickens and guinea pigs for eating...and parakeets and parrots for pets. Of course I kept guessing wrong and the lady selling them all would laugh.

There were also all kinds of interesting kitchen utensils, handmade graters, carved wooden spoons and cutting boards. Handmade soap was popular in a couple of booths, and there was even a black sticky version that had newspaper on the bottom, from when it cooled and cut. We got some of that. It turns out that it's for washing your hair. We haven't tried it yet.

After all of that we went and checked out of our hotel and took a last walk down to the riverfront. We sat for a while, talking, watching the people, listening to the Parks & Recreation trucks that had bedfuls of speakers, blaring music out on the streets. We had to decide whether to head back up into the mountains to Cuenca, or continue up the coast...heads or tails, just about. There isn't a wrong decision there. We read our books that we brought along with us and tried to decide.

At the bus terminal, before we got our tickets, we decided to get something to eat. The food smelled so good and we knew that we'd have a several hour trip ahead of us, so we stopped. The food looked good...tasted very good....and we should have just stopped right there. But we didn't. We _HAD_ to add some hot sauce to that, didn't we? It looked a little suspect and the nozzle was kind of clogged...but we put it on our food anyway. And we have regretted it. Oh well, you never know.