Day 10-12 Relaxing and sweating in Salinas.

Years ago I remember transiting through the Miami airport.  Stepping outside I was hit with heat and humidity like I have never experienced.  Well, Salinas trumps Miami!  This place is closer to Venus in temperature than Earth.  Our accommodations have two wall A/C units, (and unfortunately a glass wall facing south), they aren’t up to the task.

We typically see guards in front of banks in other countries.
This is the first time we saw a guard, (packing heat) in front
of the supermarket!

So, to relax we walked around 5 miles Saturday in this inferno and around 4 miles, Sunday.  That’s one-way, we taxied the return legs.  Saturday was along a beach, thinking that walking in the water would cool us off, we discovered it didn’t.

These were fun birds to watch walk.  Their knees went backwards!
Plus, their legs were way too long.

Not sure if these eggs are abandoned or mom left for a break.

But, we are getting all of our clothes laundered, eating some nice, very authentic, and very cheap Ecuadorian food.  Oh, back to Google Translate:  We thought that typing up our food in English and letting it translate to Spanish would work.  What we realized that in a couple of restaurants, the Spanish translation wasn’t understood by the waiter.  Our conclusion: it may be that the waiter can’t read!  Back to hand gestures and pointing at pictures.

Typical Ecuadorian food.  Rice, chicken, veggies and bananas.

Typical Ecuadorian restaurant.  Small, fans blowing everywhere, usually a
family affair.

Monday we needed to head back to Guayaquil.  Same routine, taxi, bus, taxi.  But with a twist.  We called it ‘pre-Uber’.  We hailed taxis as they drove by, but none stopped, I think they saw four of us and suitcases and figured we wanted to go to the bus station and took a pass.  As we waited outside our condo in Salinas, several guys were hanging around.  They pointed to a lady and her car.  Again, no one spoke English, she indicated she would take us to the bus station for $5.  We thought, why not.  We all hopped in and off we went.

We consider ourselves pretty savvy travelers.  But we came upon this 'Macy's' and thought
we would do a bit of shopping.  Nice to see a department store in
Guayaquil. 

Totally punked by this sign!