More of Guayaquil

Monday, Oct. 16, 2017--Guayaquil

All my explorations of the malecon have been toward the north so far.  Today, I headed south.  Most of the way was similar to the rest of the linear park.  But I was interested in seeing the market at the end which is a steel and glass structure from 1905.  Unfortunately, it was a disappointment because it was empty.  Just outside the gate of the park were hundreds of stalls under an overhead roadway and going down the middle of side streets.  My guess is that two factors sent the former tenants away from the beautiful, old market building: 1) Greatly increased rents once the building was remodeled and the park built, and 2) The security system of the park may have made it too difficult for people to shop and carry lots of purchases out of the gates.  Whatever the cause, the city has a beautiful, but now useless, ugly duckling on its hands which was a great disappointment to me and probably too many other tourists.

From there, I walked across town to see another malecon, Malecon del Salado.  It runs along a small estuary and is nice, but different, from the other one.  It has more trees and grass.  There are birds.  It is more intimate. 

This malecon runs beside the campus of the university, so I exited and walked through the campus which was filled with students.  Although the setting is nice, it isn't a pretty campus.  The buildings are cheaply constructed, suffer from mold or mildew growth, just have grills over open windows, etc.  I am sure it gets the job done, but it would be difficult for the intelligent students I saw to be proud of the campus.

Tomorrow, I move to my next stop.  Fortunately, it will be a short trip of 2 1/2 hours to the coast.

I finished reading Harvest by Jim Crace.  It takes place around the 1600-1700s in a very remote village (really an area with just an old manor house and the homes of maybe 10-12 families who work on the farm) which is probably somewhere in England.  It is an interesting story involving superstition, fear of outsiders, restless young people, failure to own up to what has been done or what is known, and how change can occur rapidly in a short period of time.  It is a good story and well written.  I gave it 4 stars out of 5.