Guayaquil, a city of 2.35 million people and every driver is a maniac! Mike hired a driver (who happened to be Juan) because he won’t drive there. Juan also commented that a few minutes there really makes his blood pressure go up.

Our first two stops were to look at granite. The first was just an office with a few small samples from China. The second was a warehouse of slabs of granite and marble. We narrowed it down to two and then decided on the darker brown. Because the floor tile is so light, the dark color should really draw attention. The prices ranged from $40 to $215 but our choice was $85/square meter, or $8.02/sq. ft.

Our next stop was Home Vega who had kitchen appliances and bath fixtures. We chose a 4-burner gas cooktop, gas oven, and refrigerator, looked at washer/dryers, and found the bathroom faucets.

We also went to lighting stores and were disappointed by the limited choice. There were a few that might work, but we didn’t find the right combination for a center fixture in the kitchen with drop lights above the island.

The malls in Guayquil are huge and we went to two of them. We did find a front entry lock set that we bought, and looked at lots of other items and compared items to our choices from Home Vega.

We didn’t get back to Salinas in time to go to the Neptuno so we don’t know how things progressed there. Mike did drop off our cabinet sample to the carpenter who is refinishing our doors. He expects that the front door will be finished tomorrow so it can be hung in our new entry wall.

One of the stores had a small pond in front. Can you tell which turtle is the statue?

It was a long and tiring day, and we had good conversation with Mike and Juan, but we missed seeing our new friends, Ron and Donna!