About Guayaquil.

Guayaquil is Ecuador´s largest city with about 3,000,000 inhabitants. Situated at sea level its port “Puerto Maritimo” is the main sea port of the country where about 80% of the country´s imports and more than 50% of its exports are handled. It is the commercial and industrial center of Ecuador and lies on the west bank of the river Guayas about 60 km from its outflow in the Gulf of Guayaquil.

Even though most people who come to the city are rather business visitors than tourists, Guayaquil offers some attractions that are worth seeing:The old district “Las Peñas” is the only part of the city where the wooden houses were not destroyed by fire and you can get an impression of the old, picturesque colonial Guayaquil.Or you walk along the riverside that has been refurbished in the project “Malecón 2000”. There you find a mall and a park with historical monuments .Guayaquil´s churches as “La Merced” or “San Francisco”, the beautiful cemetery below “Cerro el Carmen”, several museums, the Botanical Gardens and parcs (the Parque Bolivia in front of the Cathedral is filled with tame iguanas) are also definitely worth a visit.

An afternoon walk along the promenade of the broad and murky Guayas River is enjoyable, even so when you walk along "El Malecon" (Click image on right ) You can walk all the way to the Peñas neighborhood (daytime): The best time to visit Guayaquil is during the city's fiesta (9 October), which combines with Columbus Day (12 October) for several days of festivities. You can escape the city by staying in the nearby resorts of Salinas and Playas, though both are very popular and crowded.

Climate:Rain is concentrated in the summer months of January and February when the sun is highest in the sky, while Guayaquil's winters are quite dry. South of the Golfo de Guayaquil conditions become rapidly drier and one is soon in the Atacama