Guayaquil

Sammy and I landed in Guayaquil, Ecuador a little after midnight this morning. We were scheduled to get here at 9:45 last night but this is South America. Set times are rarely met like they are in the US. Like after any long as heck trip we were both exhausted by the time we settled into our hotel and we slept till nearly 8 this morning.

We purposely arrived a day early. One thing for certain is that when leaving Idaho or Wyoming even on the first day of spring, the weather can screw you. We’re going on a trip most can only dream about so we gave ourselves a buffer. If we lost a day of travel due to a snowstorm the extra day would help us make it in time. However, even though we experienced some snow on the way out of the Rockies we didn’t need the extra day so today we used the bonus to explore Guayaquil.

Sammy hired us a great guy named Julio to show us the town. If you find yourself in Guayaquil I’ll give you his number. Julio is top notch. He speaks English well, he’s very intelligent about not only Guayaquil Ecuador but also its history, the rest of Ecuador, its people and the list goes on. He even knows a few good places to nail some delicious seafood and ice cold beers!

I could go on and on about all the sites Julio showed us today, but as always for me, the fish market was the best. Even though it wasn’t a big one I stumbled into a new fish. As you can see he’s very eel like. At first I figured I as looking at some sort of smooth skinned aruana from the jungle but instead this is a saltwater fish.

Fish I’m very familiar with are these magnificent Pacific snook. Most Americans are only familiar with the snook of the Caribbean but the Pacific versions are found from Baja Mexico all the way down through the Peruvian coast. And as you can see these are a couple solid snook that would give any beach fishing fly fisherman a run for their money.

Last but not least was the Parque Bolívar. This is a park in right downtown Guayaquil that has friendly iguanas crawling all over the place. And when I say friendly I mean it. You can walk right up to them and they won’t even move. In fact, look at them in harmony with the pigeons.

Tomorrow we have an early flight to the Galapagos Islands. I’m sure we’ll have a good look around before we start fishing on Friday. Stay tuned.


Enjoy the pics!

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing