Trip to Machala, Ecuador

living.boondockingmexico@yahoo.com

Hotel Oro Verde, Guayaquil, Ecuador

I just arrived back to my base in Guayaquil.  It was a great trip up the coast and I am enjoying the weekend.  First things first.  I needed to do some laundry, get a haircut and a shoe shine.   Here at the hotel, they charge $3.50 to wash one pair of underwear!  Yikes!  You can imagine the cost to wash a shirt or a pair of casual slacks.

We arrived back to Guayaquil at 8:30 last night via a transport van service.  Comfortable, 15 passenger Mercedes.   Good air, quiet and very dark.   Most people were sleeping and I took a short nap and then read a book on my laptop.   I arrived at the hotel and had a couple of cocktails and ordered dinner.   All the expenses are on the company but I just can't have a $30 dinner, it kills me whether it's my money or not.  And all the prices here are U.S. dollars because as I said they don't have a national currency of their own anymore.  I had a nice salad and went to bed.  

Woke up this morning at 7:30, I only do that on New Year's.   I had breakfast which is included.  The lunch buffet is $32 so I won't be having lunch at the hotel.   When we arrived in Machala on the northern coast, they have a very modern bus station kind of like the airport in Dayton, Ohio.   It is connected to a shopping mall with a food court.   It was late when we arrived and we had a nice dinner, chicken breast, rice, chifle (dried banana chips but not sweet banana), choclo (corn, in this case it was a half of a cob with butter and parmesan cheese), and salad with a drink for $3.00.  A big difference from the hotel.

So I'm going back and forth here.   I left the hotel here in Guayaquil at 9:00 looking for the nearest laundry which I located on the internet.  I called but the number was disconnected.   I went walking and the neighborhood I was entering was a bit sketchy.  I kept going with my dirty clothes in my backpack.   I found the intersection but no laundry.  A block earlier I saw a hair shop, heading back I stopped and asked for a haircut.   $3.00 and the woman talked my ear off.  I asked her about the laundry and she said it was around the corner and that I hadn't made the turn.  Found it!  One load of laundry washed, dried and folded, $3.00.   I also got a shoe shine for $.50 and the guy insisted on giving me change for a dollar.

I go back in an hour to pick up the laundry.

Here are some pics of Machala.  I visited 10 schools in two days and they were all private, Catholic, and all over the map in terms of socio-economic level, size (400 to 1600 students), and level of English.  The last school was a bilingual school, very upper level and all the teachers have degrees and speak 100% English.   In each school I give a short presentation and activities related to teaching and I thought, "what am I going to share with them?".   Turns out, we worked for an hour and a half doing group activities and they loved it.  They are coming to my conference here in Guayaquil on Tuesday.  We are expecting 250 teachers.

Went running on the malecon here in Machala.

The pier at Puerto Bolívar

Ships unloading cargo from Asia.

Looking down the street from my hotel in Machala.  They recently had a major renovation of avenues, streets, and lighting.  Everything is in very good condition and I could live here too.  Machala is the banana capital of the world as well as gold mining.