Recovering from the Galapagos was a priority when returning to the mainland. We overspent and got too much sun. We needed a couple days at a budget hostel and home cooking sounded perfect. We overnighted to Guayaquil on the south coast of Ecuador and found our way to the Dreamkapture hostel.
The hostel is also renowned for its Galapagos travel agency, go figure. The location is convenient to the airport and bus terminal but kinda far from anything else. Judging from the electric fence on the walls of the hostel, the hostel's neighborhood is probably not where you wanna go for a night stroll. The undersized dipping pool was an oasis fro the day's heat.
Guayaquil is Ecuador's largest city and an important port. The Malecon 2000 is a seawall built next to downtown containing amusements, malls, gardens, and restaurants. We strolled along while people watching until the soccer game started on TV and air conditioning was calling our names.
The other odd thing about Guayaquil is its iguanas that live in a park in the middle of downtown. These guys were huge, but unlike their Galapagos cousins they prefer to live in a dirty urban park and get molested by fat mouth breathing tourists.
