We only had one night in Guayaquil, in a funky little B&B in the centre of the city, but after spending the afternoon down along the harbour, we realised we could have easily spent a couple more days there. We could have actually afforded it too. After two weeks in Galapagos, the prices in Guayaquil seemed incredibly cheap. We found a great little juice bar just down from our B&B that sold 'buckets' (the cups were literally buckets, each one held an entire blender-full of smoothie!) of fruit smoothie for $1.60, needless to say, we took full advantage, I think I may have reached my smoothie quota for 2009.
Guayaquil, according to what we've read and heard, has had a bit of a face lift in recent years. It's very obvious, all the streets are very clean, there are lots of new or done up buildings, and the entire harbour area has been done up. The harbour stretches along about 3 or 4 kms of the river and has lots of cafes and eateries, museums, an imax, viewing decks and an incredible stretch of themed gardens. We also found a plaza (a 'park' to Aussies) a little further back into the city that had iguanas, birds, fish, turtles and squirrels. It was pretty amazing to see all this wildlife in the CBD!
