Oriental aliens in Guayaquil

Dias cero y uno: Iguanas + sunset over the Pacific + from icebox to saunaland

I finished the first day of a long journey on the Southwestern Coast of Ecuador near Guayaquil and I already fell in love with this fascinating country.





It was a ridiculous journey from the start: after mistakenly taking the A train to 125th st station after taking the 1 train down to 42nd street, we arrived at JFK with only 45 minutes to spare. We asked the airtrain operator which terminal is Aerogal - the main Ecuadorian airline in such a panic mode, the operator said that of all the years he worked in JFK, he has never heard of this AEROGAL airine - so he suggested that we "start with terminal four" - that was so comforting for the three of us (I was the only one with un poco espanol abilities - far from being able to get around easily). Luckily, the plane was delayed by over 2 hours - so we left JFK after 2AM and arrived in Guayaquil around 9AM. There were no other Asian faces on this full Boeing 767 flight besides the three of us. The temperature in Guayaquil at 8AM was 80 degrees.

The custom crossing was another test: my travelmates who hold Chinese passports had a tough time: only Colombian and Chinese citizens need visas to visit this Andean country of 11 million. The border officials had difficulties deciphering what the silver sealed visa stamp and documentation were saying in their red PRC passports....another friend with a Taiwanese passport also received intense scrutiny of every page of his passport. Even though Taiwanese citizens don't need visa - their passport's country name is "Republic of China" - one word off from the "blacklisted" "People's Republic of China" passport.

Once we changed to our summer clothing in the airport bathrooms (literally stripping from our winter coats and sweaters into only shorts and shirts), we took a $5.00 taxi to downtown guayaquil (Ecuador uses American dollars - and we only use $5.00 and $1.00 here since everything is so cheap in this country). Once we met up with our Taiwanese colleague in the hostel we started strolling around the Colonial downtown Guayaquil; rented a private vehicle to tour the pacific ocean beach....Right now I'm sitting in a hostel overlooking the lagoon Rio de Guaya which feeds into the Pacific Ocean - with a private 4 bed bedroom decorated in pink for our party of four - with swing beds outside and quaint balconies....sipping on delicious tropical fruit Mora and Cicruela juice with a gorgeous ocean breeze.

Never did I imagine that with a Chinese face, I would be stared upon by all the locals. Guayaquil while it is the largest city in Ecuador with a population of near two million, is not a tourist destination. There are tons of rural migrants to this largest city - commercial and financial center of the country - to register as temporary worker. Police with batons and rifles straddle every streetcorner. Street vendors yelling "agua agua" or "helado helado" are the last resort to go to if you dehydrate in the scorching humid sun. But People are all out in this 95 degree afternoon weather - with children wearing tight uniforms and bank employees in dark suits. The buses are reminiscient of the style of the 1950s - with doors perpetually open and no air conditioning. The roads are barely marked with lanes. And we frequently see chicas bonitas riding on the back of pickup trucks. Barely any place has air-conditioning - the temperature of this place remains around 90F all year around - hence Ecuador/Equator.




We found one Chinese restaurant near the center of the town called "Chow-la-fan" - or "fried the rice" and the boss of the restaurant and maybe her children were the only Oriental Asian looking people we saw in the entire city. The basic fried rice is only $1.20 - four of us ate three plates - 90 cents per person for lunch! Take that New York!! In any case, four oriental people strolling around become the new tourist attraction for the locals...we felt like some exotic animals in a zoo exhibition. One German missionary here came up to us and started speaking Chinese....In any case there are lots more Europeans and some East Asians in Quito and Cuenca - more touristy cities in the Andes.

We stumbled upon some parks in the central part of the town and you see dozens of Iguanas resting on the sidewalks, ponds and clinching to those ginormous mangrove and other tropical trees. The local people do not look so amused by the iguanas. Iguana is the national symbol of Ecuador and so they are greatly respected and treasured with statues and symbols everywhere.