Life and Soul

Ecuador – Part12

Guaiquil is the second capital of Ecuador, a port city on the southwest coast. The sprawling industrial city & commercial port of Ecuador, it is through Guaiquil trade flows to & fro with the rest of the world.
In the past this has been a very dangerous place for gringos, it still is if you venture off into the suburbs at night, although the city now seems cleaner & safer than Quito. I am told that recently a new governor was voted in; you can see the improvements in policing, cleanliness, hygiene & pollution. Quito at present has no police presence giving the blaggers a free run of the city. Before both cities were completely corrupt, officials getting rich while chaos reigned on the streets.

It seems that the new governor in Guaiquil is not corrupt & is reinvesting the people’s money in the city, much has changed, and the main shopping streets look more akin to Oxford Street in London with its flash marble shop fronts & designer names.

Now you see two armed police on the corner of most streets (only around the posh tourist areas), it’s a little much but there is next to no crime in these areas. I would still be cautious at night as the police seem to disappear from all but government building & the streets return to the blaggers.

The air is much cleaner & thicker in Guaiquil being near the coast at sea level altitude; recently the new man has brought in pollution laws similar to the West’s. Laws which now limit exhaust fumes from factories & vehicles; anyone breaking the law has there vehicle condemned & destroyed.

There is also an army of cleaners employed, out there cleaning anything in there path, keeping the city spotless (only around the posh tourist areas). Like every other city in the world the people seem not to care about the cleanliness of the city they inhabit, dropping litter, rubbish whenever they have finished food & drink, if fact anything they had consumed & finished with is just tossed aside for another to clean up.

This makes me mad I have seen the same attitude everywhere I’ve travelled to, what makes humans too complacent to look after there own rubbish & put it in a bin or take it home. Us English are the worst, after public or commercial events the mess that has been left is unbelievable maybe one in a thousand bothers to bag there rubbish, take it away and put it in a bin!!???

This costs loads to clean up which we pay for in the ticket price or through council tax. It’s not hard or complicated – become responsible for your mess!

We in the west already live in a throwaway society; if something stops working or its fashion is out of date we throw it out to be replaced by the bigger better brighter versions. It doesn’t matter what it is the attitude is the same “ah just get a new one” we have been programmed to think like this, after all if we buy a new one we spend more money, consume, consume, consume.