South America or Bust!

Our days in Vancouver have come to a close and we're off on our next big adventure.  Sure there was lots of stressing about luggage weight (Ron doing the majority of the heavy lifting) and what to take and what to leave behind (me debating the benefits of one more pair of shoes over an unread book.)  That part made me sad...choosing between books and shoes is no simple dilemma for me.

Anyhow, here are some last looks of our final days in Vancouver:

Tobiah making his "tough" face.

Layla being goofy.

A scary lion...aka Alia.

A double birthday brunch

I'm so glad we got to see so many people, and are also sorry that we missed a few of you.  To get to Ecuador, we left 'Chelle and Tom's house a 5:30 am.  We arrived at YVR a little before 6, got our bags checked...can you believe that each of our second bags was FREE.  Mind boggling...it was early, I was tired, I think I might have cried a little bit.  (Note to you Westies...Charlottetown airport must be the most rule adherent airport in all of North America, we always got grief there...our carry on is too heavy, the checked bag was over limit, why are we smiling?  That sort of thing.  Needless to say we passed through the baggage check, security and US customs with shockingly little effort and proceeded to wait for a couple of hours for our flight.  We didn't have to go through any further security checks or customs until we got to Ecuador.  It was very smooth and easy.  (We may have used up all our good travel luck in the one trip.)

We arrived at our hotel at 1:00 am local time (11:00 pm Vancouver time and 3:am PEI time) which meant that we were traveling for 17 or so hours.  (Blech)

We woke up to a beautiful day (it was 26 Celsius at 9 am and climbed up to a sultry 32 (give or take).  In the breeze it was quite lovely...so nice to get some heat after the past few days of cool weather.  Here are some of our first looks at Guayaquil:

Guays River

Admittedly, Guayaquil has torn down most of their historic buildings, but the ones that are left look well maintained.  October 9th is the 193 anniversary of Guayaquil's independence, so we've already enjoyed a parade, street entertainment and masses of people wandering the new waterfront, which has been worked on and improved since 2000.  There are lovely squares with green space, so of which had surprising inhabitants.

I didn't know that iguanas climbed trees, but they do, one made it up a large tree in the park and I lost sight of him in the foliage.  (I'm not sure whether to be fascinated or completely creeped out.)  The iguanas had a buddy, that Ron was so pleased to see:

Cheeky squirrel

It's nice to know that Ron's favourite animal is also down here...he won't be quite as lonely.

Anyhow, as you can see the sun was shining, the iguanas were sunning themselves and I was ready for an almuerzo (lunch) and a nap.  More to come, as we head in to our second summer...don't hate us, we don't have peanut butter and can only watch CSI in dubbed Spanish, I swear, we're suffering almost as much as you are.