Guayaquil

Street in section of the older city.
H Graem © 1966

Those candidate Volunteers who successfully completed their initial training in Puerto Rico were flown to Ecuador in early May. After some initial in-country training in the capital Quito, about the middle of May we were sent to the sites where we would ultimately be working.

I was assigned to Guayaquil along with a number of other candidates.  Our trainers here were the Volunteers who had served for the last two years in the Guayaquil area. Guayaquil today is a city of over 2.5 million people. It is a port city located on the west side of the Guayas River about 50 miles inland from the open ocean.

Peace Corps ID card received
on entering the country. Could I pass
as an Ecuadorian with that mustache?

 

In the 5-22-66 letter I mention one of the parties we Peace Corps Volunteers were occasionally invited to in Ecuador. Our hosts generally included older adults who made sure behavior was orderly, but they were certainly not overbearing.  The Cumbia was usually the most popular music. However, Rock and Roll became more popular during our time in the country.

 

As for the future ten days in Quito noted in the letter above, as will be seen in the next post, it turned out to be more momentous for my future in the country than I would have imagined. 

 

One of the riverside barrios built upon bamboo stilts mentioned in the 6-15-66 letter.  Stock photo

 

My letter exaggerated the dominance of these bamboo barrios as home for the poor. Given my short stay in Guayaquil, I think my observations were skewed by the riverside location of some of the cooperatives visited with the former Volunteers. 

According to this topographic map site, the average elevation of the city is 197 feet, with a high point of 1749 feet. Obviously, these elevations do not favor bamboo houses on stilts. The city scene portrayed below shows the more hilly terrain common in a significant part of the city.

It is interesting that the rivalry between Guayaquil and Quito seems to have continued unabated in the 50 years since our Peace Corps group left the country. On the internet there are two versions of the competing city size - one says Guayaquil is the largest and other says it is the second largest.

The Carmen Hills section of Guayaquil

 

Wikipedia lists Quito's city population as 2,011,388 a with a metro population of 3,156,182. The equivalent numbers for Guayaquil being 2,698,077 and 3,113,725. Relative size seems to depend on what political boundaries one chooses to delineate the city for bragging purposes.