I have been in Guayaquil for a week. The weather has been quite bad since Wednesday, so my exploring, and morning five mile runs through the ghetto (and I do mean run), have been rather sodden. I ate some strange food, hiked around, went to a few museums, and watched Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol in Spanish IMAX. At least the six minute preview of The Dark Knight Rises was en ingles.

I was originally to fly out to the Galapagos on Thursday morning, but the website I booked through told me they couldn't find me a ticket at the price they quoted, and didn't confirm the cancellation until the day before, at which point I couldn't get a reasonably priced ticket (from Expedia instead) until Sunday the 8th. It is not too surprising from a company called CheapOAir.com. I spent the intervening rainy days playing some poker, writing, running, and working on my next CR series (4 tabling 100nl live session on Stars).

I got the chicken stew at a Jack Astor's style restaurant and it came with sides of rice and fried bananas. I can't say the bananas were good or bad, they were just weird. The usual gratis starter was not chips and salsa nor potato crisps, but you guessed it, dehydrated banana chips with peanut dipping sauce. There is a fast food chicken joint here called simply Gus, which I like to pretend is owned and operated by Gus Fring, even though he was from Chile. I ate something for breakfast that is apparently quite common, but I can only describe it as a big ball of cheese curds held together by an unknown non delicious muffin like substance. It was a perfect sphere and eating a big perfect sphere for breakfast is unnerving. The fruit juice here is spectacular though.

If I had to make wild generalizations about the Ecuadorians I have met so far I would say that they are much more fun loving than Peruvians, willing to joke and to dance where a Peruvian would keep a stiff upper lip. They also don't understand a single word of what I say. I found the claim that Spanish was spoken differently here well founded, having had trouble ordering a bottle of water. Service is what you pay for, apart from at the more expensive of the two hotels I have stayed at service has been terrible everywhere.

Guayaquil is not a tourist city like Cusco, its milling downtown is a place of business with an infrastructure that seems to be disintegrating from the inside out. This is mainly on account of a Malecon 2000 project the city undertook to build a beautiful boardwalk alongside the river Guayas in the main part of downtown, which serves as stark contrast to the cracking roads and washed out sidewalks that constitute the interior grid. People have been a bit more prone to openly stare at me and I usually take this as an opportunity to practice my Ivey stare down. Simon Bolivar is really big here (surprise!). Also, there are enormous iguanas roaming around.

I have downloaded a bunch of Darwin related books. My ticket to the Galapagos is one way. I don't know what to expect and have no plans on when I will return. I am leaving my big pack here at the hotel so I will be travelling light with my day pack and laptop bag.

Today (the 7th) I turned 26 and feel a good deal younger than I did on this day five years ago. This may seem like a strange thing to those people who didn't know me five years ago, but let me assure the readership that it is quite the positive development.

Salud y Suerte