last hour in ecuador

I'm in the airport in Guayaquil waiting for my flight to Miami to board so this is my last post from Ecuador. As silly as it sounds, I miss Loja already, but as always, I am really excited to be home tonight and to see my family and my cats and my friends. I've had  a great time here overall and I'm really going to miss the experience, but now it's on to bigger and hopefully better things.

I'm not excited in the least for the next 12 hours of air travel. Yesterday morning, my flight from Loja to Guayaquil was almost ridiculous. The plane was tiny, maximum capacity 30 people.... It had legit propellers and bounced all over the place in the air. Thank goodness it was only a 40 minute flight because I was dying of motion sickness. Bigger planes are less of a problem.

Yesterday after arriving in Guayaquil, I was greeted by a girl I used to work with at Canadian and her boyfriend. They went with my by taxi to my hostel and then we went out to breakfast and walked around the Malecon 2000 which is Guayaquil's boardwalk on the rio Guayas. The city of Guayaquil is gigantic and kind of dirty / intimidating, but the Malecon is beautiful and safe. There were armed guards all over it. My hostel was fine, lots of stairs, but thank goodness this is a patriarchal society and I didn't carry my luggage up or down them. After my former colleague and her boyfriend went home, I walked around the Malecon some more, went to the Iguana park and the Parque Cenentario and at some lunch. I was exhausted after sleeping only 3 hours the night before and walking around all morning and up and down 430 some stairs to get a good view of the city so I went back to my hostel around 5 and watched some tv and fell asleep. I woke up around 10, too late to go out because Guayaquil is dangerous after dark so I went back to sleep and slept on and off until 6 o'clock this morning. I definitely needed all that sleep and I feel perfectly fine now so I'm glad.

Well, just wanted to post one more time before my adventure is over. Life in general is an adventure, but Ecuador has been my greatest journey so far. :)