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It's been fun looking at a few pictures every day since we came back and making a post. Get to relive parts of the trip over time. The trip was from Nov 11 to Nov 26. It was an extremely enjoyable trip ( Read more... )

A bit more of wandering around Guayaquil near the waterfront. Museum, Ferris Wheel (we didn't ride it, though should have), train car, small amusement park, changing colored lights... And Step number 1 going up the hill.

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We had one more day before we returned home from Ecuador (this was the end of November). We stayed in the Windham hotel on the waterfront (Guayquil has lots of waterfront - river and sea - it is a huge port). There are some old portions of the town up a nearby little hill and we wandered around them - this was different than the big-city feel of ( Read more... )

The last part of the train trip was from Yaguachi to Duran (the end of the line near Guayaqui). Again we had a steam engine for this part. They had been pulling the train backwards for a while which made the observation car not quite as nice because of no direct rear view. At the end of the trip we celebrated with a fancy drink and some ( Read more... )

I like to take photographs of laundry hanging out to dry. I think of it as a form of street art. We passed by lots of instances. And also there was some interesting graffiti and street art on buildings.

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On the last day of the Tren Crucero trip we visited Hacienda La Denesa, an inn, restaurant, cacao plantation, and horse farm. As the train was going we passed spots where there lots of little brown pellets lying on the ground. I wondered what they were; and found out later- they were cacoa seeds. We got a tour of the farm seeing some demos of how ( Read more... )

As we descended and left the mountainous area there were more houses, and people to be seen in addition to the interesting and varied scenery.

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In 1901 they were constructing the railroad between Quito and Guayaquil and had to deal with ascent/descent down the side of a mountain. The found a spot locals called the Condor's Aerie and proceeded to build a zig-zag course of switch-backs so that dropped 500 meters in about 12 kilometers such that the train would go back and forth while ( Read more... )

About an hour from Riobamba the train pulled into Guamote where there was very busy market right by the train tracks. A wide variety of stuff was being sold there. Some of it was in the open air and some in a huge shed.

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