¡Agua, Agua, Agua…veinticinco centavos! ¡Coco, Coco, Coco…veinticinco centavos! ¡Helado, Helado…veinticinco centavos…Helado! The vendors on the buses have a regular rhythm and cadence here, and I don’t know what would happen if one of them was to break with tradition.

Espuma de agua jugosa. Juicy water foam. There’s all this talk about how, in Ecuador, they drink their fruit, but that’s really not ‘zactly true. Instead I find that they drink a watered down, sugared up concoction that contains just a hint of fruitiness. I'm just saying...

Gracias, Mama. For Mother’s Day, at 0700 sharp!, we are going to loudly serenade you  - and the entire neighborhood – for 30 minutes.

The Transportation Posting. This has been a long time in the works and I hope it’s worth the wait. Bus fares are dirt cheap in Guayaquil, and you get what you pay for: a rag-tag, unregulated fleet of vehicles and drivers and a daily free-for-all that puts life & limb in jeopardy before, during and after the ride. The buses don’t really pull to the right lane, nor do they really stop, to let riders on or off; they just kinda slow down. I haven’t witnessed an accident yet, but there are zillions of ‘em. The photo below was taken by someone else; note the strict lane usage. If this was a two-way street things would look about the same.

One day I got on a south-bound #92 bus, named the “Apache VIP,” that was familiar to me from a previous ride. Now I wouldn’t pretend that this machine was decked out in ‘full-zoot’ Mexican livery, but it was a contender: fuzzy dice, fake wood dashboard and overhead, crocheted curtains and more. A guy with a dead chicken got on at one point. No suspension. Use your imagination to conjure up the worst and you wouldn’t be far wrong.

Vehicle inspection is still the law here, and I reckon that’s a good thing. But the crazy thing is that the inspection station is adjacent to the busiest place in town, the Terminal Terrestre bus depot. The entire area surrounding the Terminal is under construction, and so the traffic pattern for the inspection station has been changed: the morning of the last weekday of the month, I saw cars and small trucks and motorcycles lined up as far as the eye could see, blocking one lane of a busy boulevard, waiting their turns. As I’ve come to expect here in Ecuador, the whole affair turned into a circus, with food stalls, auto equipment hawkers and repair stations popping up willy-nilly.

“Walk, Don’t Run.” The Ventures might have been correct in their advice, back in the halcyon days, if you were living in Southern California, but here in GUY, if you're crossing the street, it’s “Run, Don’t Stop!” Otherwise you're a dead man.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIuIIqbyEIU

[photos to follow]

Good Friday? Not so good. Easter Sunday wasn’t great, either. The very traditional Good Friday meal in South America is a soup called fanesca, made with about a dozen beans and grains and some cod fish. To be honest, everybody eats it but hardly anybody really likes it. I thought that it tasted like a bean soup without any flavor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanesca

During my Friday morning run I happened upon a ‘Stations of the Cross’ procession that was so childish and cartoonish that it made me quite sad...

Pretty much - since Thursday -  things in town have been shut down, and families have traveled to visit family, or to the beach. Today is Easter Sunday, and – since all the bakeries are closed, and planning ahead isn’t an Ecuadorian attribute - there hasn’t been any bread in the house for 2 days, and, honestly, not a whole lot else beside rice & chicken & potatoes. At lunch today he whole extended family sat down to meager bowls of that every day concoction and, to a man [and woman], ate it with a spoon, as is the custom hereabouts. Knives & forks are seldom seen.

Seguridad. Security is a BIG concern here in Ecuador, and the private guard business is booming. I swear that I saw a bank guard downtown carrying a beat up, WW II vintage, M3 "Grease Gun."

Then, too, there are the ubiquitous ‘guard shacks’ on just about every street. To my mind the hombres who man most of these structures would be ‘the usual suspects’ in any crime investigation.

Things are barred and locked up twice! Electric fences, cameras, and broken glass on the top of walls are everywhere to be seen:

Casa Barros, where I reside with my host family.

Llaves. Keys. In ECU one keeps and always carries keys to locks that haven’t existed for generations or which are hanging rusted shut on some gate, somewhere. This ensures that several times every day the opening of any current locks will take a trial & error process lasting for many minutes. Everybody looks like a custodian.

Parque Historico. On 13 April 2011 I took a long, hot walk across the Rio Daule to Parque Historico. Lonely Planet describes the park like this:

"Historic Williamsburg meets the zoo at this large park across the Guayaquil-Durán Bridge. It's divided into three zones: the Endangered Wildlife Zone, which has 45 species of birds, animals and reptiles; the Urban Architecture Zone, which has a restaurant and showcases the development of early 20th-century architecture in Guayaquil; and the Traditions Zone, which focuses on local traditions with an emphasis on customs, crafts and agriculture.”