Guayaquil: the Malecón and colorful Las Peñas

Pearl of the Pacific and Ecuador's principal commercial port, Guayaquil has transformed since 2000 its degraded waterfront into one of South America's most carefully maintained urban parks.

The Malecón and the Las Peñas neighborhood are easily walked along the Guayas River.

The Malecón 2000, more than two kilometers of waterfront rehabilitated starting in 1997, brings together botanical gardens, a monumental garden with statues of Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín and a shopping center facing the water.

The Las Peñas neighborhood, the oldest of the city, climbs along four hundred forty-four numbered steps to the Santa Ana lighthouse, between colonial houses painted in vivid colors that have become a city symbol.

The Parque Seminario, known locally as Parque de las Iguanas, is home to dozens of green iguanas that live freely among the trees and paths of the park, in front of the city cathedral.

The Cerro Santa Ana, the hill on which Las Peñas climbs, offers from the lighthouse at its summit a complete view of the Guayas River and the skyscrapers of Guayaquil's financial center.

The iguanas of Parque Seminario, indifferent to passersby after generations of urban coexistence, are perhaps the most unusual image most visitors take away from Guayaquil.

From the Santa Ana lighthouse, that same park disappears among the rooftops of the lower city—a reminder of how much Guayaquil has built upward around such tiny details.