This is a continuation of our trip to Ecuador last week. These blogs will also be used to create our mission book when we get home. We can't possibly share all our pictures but there are a lot of them here!
In conjunction with our meeting with the Assistant Auditors, we met at
the Guayaquil temple for a session together. It was in Spanish but the spirit
was great and the temple so beautiful. I went through the veil in Spanish. We
met at the Kennedy Stake Center for our training meeting with left to right Richard Prado, Alturo Espinosa, Gustavo Villacres, and Carlos Purunacajas. We were staying at the Hampton Inn which was close to everything.
We walked to the Bolivar Park after church last week. That was a unique experience because it was full of iguanas, big ones, and they were very friendly. Many of the people were feeding them lettuce so it was fun to watch. We walked around the Metropolitan Cathedral which was typical of the Catholic churches. It was just loaded with beautiful flowers which are so plentiful here. The Metropolitan Cathedral was right across the street.
We walked up the hill Las Penas with 468 stairsteps to the top. There was a little lighthouse and small church at the top with a wonderful panoramic view of the city and river. It was pretty hard on Joe’s knees so I’m glad he was at least able to do it. It was a unique walk up with the little shops, residential houses and gardens, and cobblestone streets with art galleries. Joe bought a bottle of water at the top from a local street vendor. He was so thirsty I had to ask him if the bottle was sealed . . . it wasn't. Poor Joe, in the garbage can in went!
We went on a tour of the mangroves just south of
Guayaquil. In the map at the top, the brown area is where the mangroves were. Also with us on our tour was Richard and Jo Webber. They were fun to be with! It was a great experience, first with a canoe ride along the river
to see the birds and mangrove forests. The river empties into the Pacific Ocean so it rises and falls with the tide. One of the pictures above is a man coming out of
the swampy jungle with a catch of crabs for the day which is when the tide is low. He has as many on his
back as he has in the front. The crabs always leave a hole and the men just
reach in and pull them out! It is unlawful to collect the females which is evident from the larger
holes. Also in the little pictures is a wasp nest, a nest of baby rodents, a tarantula in a hole, our two guides Mario in blue and Jairo in white, mangos high in a tree, the mangled tree roots that fall out of the top of the trees, and a tree trunk that looks like a rose stem with thorns. The second part of the trip was a hike in the
beautiful jungle where we heard the howler monkeys in the trees but we couldn’t
see them. They were very loud!
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