On time pick up from our hotel. Tour around the highlights of the city. Guide was very knowledgeable and personable but the city itself is just not that scenic.
Trevor R. · United States
ToursByLocalsVerified on toursbylocals.com ↗
The story
The city, told by someone who grew up in it
Most people pass through Guayaquil on the way to the Galápagos and never look up. This is Allyson’s most-reviewed tour: the plazas, the river and the old hill, with the stories that never made it into a guidebook and a car that carries you between the hot stretches.
- Pickup
Iguanas in front of the cathedral
The car drops you at Parque Seminario, where land iguanas doze on the grass and drape themselves over the branches while the city honks around them. Your guide tells you why they live here, then walks you into the cathedral across the street. It is the first ‘wait, really?’ of Ecuador, and you’ve barely left your hotel.
- + 40 min
Where the city plotted its freedom
Plaza de la Administración, between the Town Hall Palace and the University of the Arts, then La Fragua de Vulcano: the monument to the night in 1820 when a group of friends met to plan Guayaquil’s independence. You hear the names, the gossip and the risks, standing on the same streets they walked.
- + 1 h 30
The river, then something sweet
The Malecón 2000 follows the wide brown Guayas river to La Rotonda, where Bolívar and San Martín shake hands in bronze. A breeze off the water, shade under the trees, and a short walk to Calle Panamá for Ecuadorian chocolate or a glass of Ecuadorian wine, depending on the day.
- + 2 h 30
444 steps to the lighthouse
Las Peñas, the city’s oldest neighbourhood, climbs Cerro Santa Ana in numbered stairs past painted wooden houses, small bars and open doorways. Climb all 444 to the lighthouse, or ride the Aerovía over the river and let the car take you up. From the top, the whole river bends below you. The car waits at Puerto Santa Ana.
- The longer day
Six hours, ending in chocolate
Choose the six-hour version and the same walk slows down, with more stories and more time on the hill. Then the car takes you to a private tasting of locally crafted chocolate, where you taste side by side, learn how Ecuadorian cacao travelled the world and leave knowing exactly what you like.
