Guayaquil (the city of dreams), Cuenca & Cajas

Guayaquil was a different city. I arrived at 8pm on a Friday night and the city center was by and large closed down. My dining options were of the gentrified choices of Dunkin donuts, Burger King and KFC. I ended up having the 3 piece secret recipie with rice and beans. Needless to say the place lacked luster.
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View from the Hilltop above the city.

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The Guayaquil museum is filled with these diaoramas set to music and narration. It sorta sounded like the spanish version of Team America World Police.

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Iguanas? What Iguanas? The Park infront of the Continental Hotel was filled with hundreds of Iguanas.

Cuenca

Cuenca is a beautiful city. Much nicer than Quito or Guayaquil.

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View of Cuenca in the evening.

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The stone on this building looks like Teak wood marble from Pakistan.

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Me and Joe at the Panama Hat factory.

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I wanted this one but it cost $80 USD.  The lady told me that in the US it would sell for over $300.

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Butcher Shop in the Cuenca Market.  Don’t mess with this dude.

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Cuenca has Hot Dogs with sliced spicy sausage on top.  It was excellent.

Cajas

Ecuador has a ton of national parks were you can go on hiking adventures.  Cajas National park was cool.  The mountains were filled with lakes and lagoons that you can hike around.  We only did a day hike but next time I’ll do the three day trek across the park.

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Me at the top of some peak 4,000 meters up.

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Me and our guide Andre “figuring” out how to get down from the peak.  There was no trail and we were exploring in grass that was really deep.

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Lord of the rings type forest.

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We climbed to the top of this peak (4,000 meteres) and we literally came straight down the side of it.

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