South America,  Ecuador,  Travel

Guayaquil (1), Puerto Lopez

July 4, 2021 /

I left the Galapagos Islands by plane and flew to Guayaquil, a coastal city in the south, which is the largest city in Ecuador. As soon as I came out of the airport gate of Guayaquil, I saw a long pool on both sides, with slate, green plants and many goldfish swimming around, which was super beautiful. No wonder this airport was named the best airport in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2013.

Two weeks ago, a friend introduced her to me, a friend who lives here. She is a Shanghai girl and offered to receive me warmly. Her husband is a local. She caught up with the epidemic not long after moving in in 2019. She started her own business and sold painting materials online. Looking at the watercolor paintings she painted in her living room, they are all self-taught and have great artistic talent. Thinking about the basic skills I learned to sketch when I was a child, but I haven't drawn for many years, and her experience inspired me to pick up painting.

In the evening, we went out for a walk together, and within a few steps of the street, we could see a Chinese restaurant. In addition to the chifa Ecuadorian-style Chinese food we saw in other cities before (selling fried rice, fried noodles, etc.), we also saw some authentic ones. Cantonese-Hong Kong-style restaurant that sells morning tea. I heard from friends that there were a lot of Chinese immigrants here in the early days, and many opened restaurants and small businesses. While strolling with her, I learned a lot about the lives of local people, social security issues and some anecdotes. I've heard that the seafood here is famous before, and it's true. In the evening, their husband and wife graciously treated me to the best seafood dinner in Ecuador in three weeks. After sitting down, the waiter will give each person a sturdy, non-slip board, a small wooden hammer and a plastic apron. After waiting for a big pot of crabs, my friend's husband showed me how to knock and eat crabs with a small hammer. It was a joy for everyone to knock and eat crabs together. The grilled giant squid, thick prawn soup and another three-flavored seafood rice were also superb. In the end, I ate until I couldn't walk, and I was so satisfied.

After dinner, we went back and chatted for a long time. We are the same age and have common experiences of living in China and the United States for a long time. We have a lot of consensus. She is a girl with ideas and opinions, independence, and daring to think and act. I admire her decision to move to a strange country with great cultural differences and different languages for her love. During this period, she needs to adapt slowly. Challenges and loneliness are not something ordinary people can handle. We chatted for hours without realizing it, and it's been a long time since we slept so late.

Today, I took the bus to a small coastal town north of here. Guayaquil is the largest city in Ecuador. The long-distance station is huge and integrated with a large commercial building. There are various shops and small restaurants on each floor. In addition, The first floor is for buying tickets, and the second and third floors are places to wait for the bus and take the bus. It is very clean, tidy and modern.

Puerto López is a small coastal town, coming here just in time for the weekend, and basically all the people from the big cities come here for a seaside holiday. In the early morning, many fishing boats came ashore to sell fish, attracting many seabirds circling overhead. Whales can be seen here in this season of the year 🐳. I signed up for a half-day tour to see whales. The wind and waves were a bit heavy on a cloudy day, and some people on the boat became seasick and started to vomit. Luckily I've been through the Galapagos island of strong winds and waves, which is nothing. When we arrived at the deep-sea area for whale watching, for some reason, the crew took me and the other two girls to climb the ladder to the second-floor bow, saying that there was a wide field of vision and we could see whales for the first time. I grabbed the armrest with one hand and the phone with the other, for fear that the phone would fall into the sea or take me down. At first, I could only see the small tail of the whale on the sea from a distance, like a small sapling. Slowly learning from the captain, you can find the whale at a glance from a long distance, and let the latter captain drive over and take a closer look. The main thing is to see where there is a water spray like a fountain, and the whales are in that direction, but many times when the boats pass by, the whales also swim to other places. This is really a physical exercise that tempers the will and patience. The three of us sat on the bow and looked around, and when we saw a spray of water, we stretched our arms excitedly. But sometimes I couldn't see anything except the big waves for ten minutes, and the bow was cold and windy. I wanted to go back to the cabin several times, but I persevered. At the last moment, I saw a big whale that was very close. .

Before the boat was about to go back, I went back to the cabin, and there was a big family with Asian faces sitting across from them, but I only heard them communicate in Spanish before. The young man suddenly asked me in Chinese if I had taken a photo on the second deck of the boat. When I saw the good photos, I realized that their ancestry is Cantonese. I thought they were born and raised in Ecuador, but in fact he and his wife were both born and raised in Venezuela. They were born and raised in Venezuela three years ago because of the political upheaval in Venezuela. Just moved to Guayaquil. He took his parents, wife and two very young children to see the whales, but he really suffered. His wife was seasick and vomited all the time. People are basically wet and cold. He said that taking children and elderly people out, they are uncomfortable, and they don't have the heart to watch whales. Ask me to add WeChat, then they can only see the whale from the photo. He also said that when I get back to Guayaquil, I can contact them anytime if I need any help. Chinese people are really all over the world, and they can take root and survive everywhere.

You May Also Like

Baños, Chimborazo

June 17, 2021

Medellin (2)

November 19, 2019

Quito (2), Otavalo

June 22, 2021

1,609 Comments

Leave a Reply to wikipedia reference Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

en_USEnglish
Powered by TranslatePress
en_USEnglish zh_CN简体中文