Guayaquil, Ecuador

We only had a little over a day in Guayaquil, but I found it to be my favorite city in South America so far – friendly, easy to access, attractive and clean, and filled with chocolate!

I was very pleasantly surprised by our arrival at the GUY airport, where the immigration hall was small, uncrowded, and easy to get through.  No separate lines for citizens vs visitors, just one calm queue that moved promptly.  No mad scene outside the airport.  An easy 20 minute drive to our hotel, with nice landscaping and monuments in the roundabouts of the busy but clean roads.  

The Hotel del Parque is an old colonial building set in a park (as the name suggests), with enough to do that you needn’t leave the grounds.  We spent our day on site exploring the grounds, enjoying a chocolate making tour and tasting, visiting the tiny spa (in the bell tower!), and concluding with cocktails and dinner at the excellent Casa de Julian restaurant.

Though there is some unrest (for example the morning we returned to the US there were widespread power outages in advance of a weekend vote – either coincidental timing driven by drought, or rumors of sabotage), the people we met were very appreciative of our visit and seemed frustrated by the situation, which is understandable. That said, we were encouraged not to leave the hotel on our own.

I organized an outing to the Ecua Andino Panama hat showroom one morning, escorted by a hotel driver who stayed with us the whole time, and the showroom had guards outside so it certainly felt secure.  

Did you know (I didn’t!) that Panama hats are from Ecuador, not Panama?  They got their name because they were worn by workers constructing the Panama canal, but should more accurately be known as Ecuadorian hats.

They are hand-woven from Toquilla palm fronds, and depending on the fineness of the weave this can take anywhere from one week to six months.  The finest hats (described to us as “the Lambourghini of hats”) costs over $1000 and feels like fine fabric compared to the coarser weave of a base model.  

We had a fun chocolate tour and tasting on the hotel grounds, seeing cacao trees and pods, then tasting chocolate buttons in a wide range of cocoa percentages from white to 100%. And we learned some interesting cocoa facts – for example, the indigenous people of the area would trade one cocoa bean for 20 small tomatoes or 5 small, long chiles. Or, for 65 beans, you could get a cotton cape!

I hope to return to the Galapagos and look forward to another stay in Guayaquil!