A day in Guayaquil

Wednesday July 20

There was a group of us that before we left wanted to go to and see the temple in Ecuador. It is in a town called Guayaquil, about a 4 hour drive from Cuenca. We loaded up the bus early and headed out on a crazy drive over the Andes Mountains. The drive was very windy as we drove up into the mountains before finally coming to our rest stop with the most amazing view. According to my research on Google Earth when we stopped here we were at approximately 13,000ft above sea level. The view from here was one of the best I had experienced in Ecuador so far. We all considered this heaven.

After a long drive we made it to the temple and when we unloaded from the bus it was nice and humid and hot! Many of the girls it seemed didn't know much about the humidity and were amazed the air could feel so wet, but they are at least getting a sense of what the Amazon will be like.

After time spent in the temple we left and headed out to one of 13 malls that Guayaquil has to eat lunch. In the food court area they had McDonald's, Taco Bell and KFC and to us we were all amazed and greatful for American food. Looking back now I should have stuck with the American food instead of being courageous and trying some yummy looking chicken and rice. In the end it was deceiving and made me way sick my last night and morning in Cuenca. One girl did get Taco Bell and it turned into a funny story because she was so excited. When she sat down to eat her taco she realized that in Ecuador Taco Bell's they actually use real meat in their taco's instead of the weird processed stuff in the states that tastes really good even though you are not sure if it is real or not. My friend started yelling that she just wanted the fake meat so it tasted like America, because this did not taste American at all. Maybe this was one of those stories that you had to be there for it to be funny, but to all of us there we were cracking up laughing.

After lunch and before out trip back to Cuenca we made one more stop... The Iguana Park. This is just a park like any other that is not enclosed but free for anyone to walk around in or sit and enjoy a nice day. The only difference is this park is full of big iguanas that just chill out on the sidewalk or grass or in the trees. You have to be very careful when walking under trees, I think it is an iguana sport to see how many people they can poop on from hiding in the tree. Overall it was a nice place to stop and pet these awesome creatures.