Cuenca (July 23, 2006)

My fever was gone this morning but my stomach felt bad and I had a headache as well. We were checking out this morning to travel to Cuenca, for a stopover on our way to Baños. We decided that feeling bad in a hotel room or feeling bad on a bus didn’t make much difference, so we decided to still travel today. We walked down to the road and flagged down the next local bus that was going to Loja, where we bought a ticket for Cuenca leaving immediately (11:30). The bus to Cuenca took around 5 ½ hours.

Ecuadorian buses are noticeably different from the ones in Argentina, Bolivia and Peru; nice but different. The buses seem to have three defining characteristics: the meaninglessness of your assigned seat (no one cares and so far we have yet to find our seats unoccupied, so we just take another set because the people won’t move when we ask), the locking of the bathroom doors (you have to beg the bus staff to let you use them, though they will tell you they prefer you to use the toilets at the various stops…although we think one lady was left behind at one stop when she used the bathroom so that option doesn’t hold much appeal), and the most amusing thing about Ecuadorian buses is that the Ecuadorians are prone to motion sickness and barf bags are conveniently located fore and aft. We have seen several people take advantage of them and some not even bother with the bags.

In our experience so far, we find that Ecuador is more developed than Peru (which surprised us), with the houses being nicer in all the towns, less litter along the roads (there are actually signs encouraging people to throw their trash in the bins), more fertile land, and less poverty. There is certainly a lot more American influence here as well (the president is buddies with the States) in the way people dress, the cars they drive, the television shows, etc. One good example is a man we saw on a bus that was wearing a New York t-shirt and had a Nike swoosh tattooed on his arm. Globalisation is alive and well in Ecuador, that’s for sure.

We arrived in Cuenca at dusk, enough time to walk around the main plaza and the downtown area for a little while before it got dark. Cuenca is known as Ecuador’s most colonial city and the architecture and cobbled streets sure speak to that. It was Sunday so almost everything was closed but we found a nice little Italian pizzeria and heladeria where we ate dinner. I still was not feeling the greatest, but I managed to drink a delicious “orange flip” ice cream and orange juice shake and one little slice of pizza. Lincoln had a very good mango and chocolate sundae for dessert. The ice cream at the place here was the best we’ve had so far. We walked back to our hotel and thought that it would have been nice to spend more time in this city. We need to be in Quito by the 27^th though, and want to spend a couple of days in Baños, so we have to leave in the morning. We really feel like we are rushing through Ecuador and may need to come back again some day to see it properly (particulary the coast, which is supposed to be beautiful, and the rainforest too).