To Cuenca!

Monday, September 15th, 2008

Forenote: Pictures will be added later due to -- hold on, there's a Slow Internet Error I need to fix...

Leaving Baños for Cuenca:

Baños – 5.4 ****. This tourist valley town welcomes you in with its sugar cane and taffy and would love to send you out on adventures like rafting, four-wheeling or dune-buggying around Ecuador for the day. You won’t be pickpocketed on the street, but you might lose some money on eating in pizza, lasagna, and spaghetti restaurants – the first since you’ve hit the road. And, for the more frugal adventurer there is plenty of hiking and cheaper panaderías and the marketplace with identical meals at each stall.

Baños to Riobamba – bus var.: 5.5. While Riobamba doesn’t have much to speak of, this is really a stopping point on the way south to the likes of Cuenca, Loja, or some Incan ruins. As long as you keep your things in sight (e.g. on your lap) you will be fine. Packed lunch is optional; meals may be had as you drive this hour thanks to vendors who hop on the bus and run the isles, all singing their own version of Row, Row, Row Your Boat to the tune of their fruits or fried foods.

Riobamba to Cuenca – bus var.: 5.5 II. This trip is Baños to Riobamba times six. It’s six hours as long, six times as scenic and there are six times as many people coming and going, passengers and vendors alike. The best view is out the right window when you see clouds washing up over all of the waves of hills that are far away past valley towns beneath your curving mountain road.

We get to Cuenca (which I will grade once we’re done with it) and catch a cheap taxi to the mercado San Francisco (San Francisco market). We’re tired after a long day of bus rides (See: 11am-7pm) but our legs really need some stretching. Hiking up the six flights of stairs to reach our Hostel el Monasterio that overlooks the market takes our breath away, but we still need to fetch us some dinner to cook in the hostels kitchen. This involves walking around much of the charming city after the sun has retired. No problem! We go from street store to street store. Many are closed, many are not helpful because they don’t know where to find what we want, but we manage to scrape together ingredients bit by bit. Eventually we get enough and remember we still have a packet with which to fashion a soup, so we head back to find that our hostel kitchen has some extra guerilla chefs: cockroaches. We have big roaches, small roaches, quick roaches, and even undercover roaches. Luckily, they stay out of our pots, so we’re fine. I just smoosh ‘em when they enc-roach upon our stovetop or countertop.

We take our dinner and enjoy it while watching the movie Final Days starring Mark Wahlburg. It’s not a satisfying movie at all, but we finished it.

Beddybye!