The Guayas, Ecuador’s “chocolate milk” river…

The great River Guayas is formed of water that has traversed the entire country; water from glaciers, páramo, subtropics, foothills and coastal plains. Technically, it is born of its two tributaries, the Babahoyo and the Daule, adjacent to Cerro Santa Ana. It is the most symbolic river in Ecuador. It forms the largest river delta of South America´s Pacific shores. It adorns the country’s coat of arms. It gives the city its identity. The ‘Placid Guayas’, or “El Manso” in Spanish, pushed and pulled by the tides, sometimes moves downriver towards the beaches and mangroves of the Pacific Ocean, and other times upriver, toward the Andes… It is the blood that courses through the veins of Ecuador’s largest port, dominated by the whim of the ocean and the moon.

Crocodile hunters…

The crocodile in or near downtown Guayaquil was common a hundred years ago. Actually, they say it was not uncommon for the city’s burliest men to brawl with the beast on mudflats formed along the banks of the River Guayas. Although some may still maraud distant marshes, the crocodile has basically disappeared from public memory. Perhaps today it only survives as a metaphor for the giant river itself, which comes to drag its tail along the flanks of the city.

Content/Photo courtesy of Ñan magazine, Ecuador’s foremost travel publication.