Today I visited two more big malls in a quest to find a certain type of insect repellent. Though one of the malls is said to be one of South America's biggest, there was a sad lack of outdoor shops. The pharmacies didn't help either: they just had more of the same products they have in all of their chain stores.
Nevertheless, the bus ride to the malls was quite interesting because I got a closer look at the madness of traffic in Guayaquil. The honking wasn't as bad as it was in Lima, but with the extra-loud bus engine, open windows, and hundreds of cars surrounding the bus on six to eight lanes, the noise level was way too high for me. Add to that the manner of driving - squeezing into full lanes, cutting corners, and people jumping on and off in the middle of the road - I was happy that most of the time I choose to not take the inner-city buses.
With a bus ride like that, I was especially grateful to find a more quiet place again, even if it was a church ;-)
The cathedral of Guayaquil is a huge and imposing building - and a relatively new one: it was completed around 1950, after the previous one had burned down in a big fire.
The statue in front is Simon Bolívar, one of the heroes of South America that is honored in many countries.
Inside the cathedral, it seemed like technology had caught up with the church: there were lights embedded at the bottoms of all the columns, and on many of them there were flat screens - do they really think it's that important that everyone gets a good closeup of the priest in front?
Nevertheless, the bus ride to the malls was quite interesting because I got a closer look at the madness of traffic in Guayaquil. The honking wasn't as bad as it was in Lima, but with the extra-loud bus engine, open windows, and hundreds of cars surrounding the bus on six to eight lanes, the noise level was way too high for me. Add to that the manner of driving - squeezing into full lanes, cutting corners, and people jumping on and off in the middle of the road - I was happy that most of the time I choose to not take the inner-city buses.
With a bus ride like that, I was especially grateful to find a more quiet place again, even if it was a church ;-)
The cathedral of Guayaquil is a huge and imposing building - and a relatively new one: it was completed around 1950, after the previous one had burned down in a big fire.
The statue in front is Simon Bolívar, one of the heroes of South America that is honored in many countries.
Inside the cathedral, it seemed like technology had caught up with the church: there were lights embedded at the bottoms of all the columns, and on many of them there were flat screens - do they really think it's that important that everyone gets a good closeup of the priest in front?
