|
On the way back from the Galápagos we spent a day and a half in Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city. It's a large seaport which traditionally hasn't had a lot of tourism.
|
In an effort to attract tourists, Guayaquil made an enormous investment in Malecon 2000, an ultramodern promenade along the waterfront. It has a nice contemporary art museum, a large garden area, an area for kids, and a shopping mall. It didn't seem that it was very successful in making Guayaquil a center of tourism, but there were many locals taking advantage of it when we arrived on Sunday. |
|
Malecon 2000 has a very consistent design language which is used throughout, even though all the architecture remains imaginative and non-repetitive. |
|
A "security camera" near the art museum. The entire Malecon was gated and heavily patrolled, and is generally a very safe place to hang out. |
|
A sidewalk in the Malecon reminiscent of a prow. |
|
An old tree the Malecon had been built around. |
|
No rollerblades, and no guns. |
|
Just north of the Malecon is a hill with a lighthouse on top. Here, the art museum has an architectural element similar to SFMOMA. |
|
There are shops and restaurants along the 444 numbered stairs up to the lighthouse. Most of them were closed for siesta when we visited. |
|
A panorama of the city taken from the lighthouse. |
|
The lighthouse stairs. |
|
The art museum complex, with IMAX theater at the right. |
|
A little indoor/outdoor museum showing the history of Guayaquil's attempts to defend itself against pirates over the years. This is a reconstruction of the prow of a historic ship. |
|
One of the stores offered to pierce your baby's ears, cheeks, lips, tongues, navels, etc. |
|
Another species of land iguana at a downtown park a block from our hotel. |
|
Graves in Guayaquil's large city cemetery. These were a small part of a massive wall. |
|
More buildings in the city cemetery. |
|
The most unusual thing happened while we were in Guayaquil -- a newspaper reporter caught actual tourists in the Malecon! This newspaper section was served with our hotel breakfast the next morning. |
