For some reason there are few hostel/hostals in Guayaquil. We opted for Hotel Sander when the few hostels got bad reviews in Lonely Planet and Rough Guide. In order to save money, we opted for rooms without air conditioning. We paid about 7-8 dollars a person. The rooms did have a private bathrooms and television but the walls were COMPLETELY WHITE. In fact, everything was completely white! There was no character to these rooms whatsoever and felt very institutional. The breakfast place next door was terrible and I wish we had not listened to the hotel telling us to go there. In general, this hotel was fine but I would not go back.

WARNING: After living in Quito for over 4 months now, you would think I would not be scared by the dangerous warnings about Guayaquil. However, we found Guayaquil to be much more dangerous than Quito. The Malecon is very safe, even at night because there is limited entry and armed guards. However, there is a huge problems with taxis in Guayaquil. After a night hiking up the beautiful 444 stairs of Las Peñas, we got 4 taxis to fit all of us. One group of my friends were robbed by their taxi driver and two armed gunmen who jumped into the taxi at a red light. The "secuestro express" turns out to not be all that uncommon for the yellow ("official") taxis in Guayaquil. They take you around to ATMS to get as much money as possible and then drop you off well outside of Guayaquil. My poor friends were very scared after being held hostage for 1.5 hours in the taxi and were ready to get back to our homes in Quito. We learned now that you should call and executive unmarked taxi in Guayaquil which is not true in Quito.