Ecuador - cuenca

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i arrived in Ecuador on the 17th of September. i was in Mancora, Peru for a few days for a little sun and beach time. On my way to Ecuador, i hopped on a bus that was coming from the amazon and i got the typical response, look a gringo. The people were nice and i had a nice chat. When i got off the bus the driver only charged me $1 for a two hour ride. But this is the point where things changed. I was surrounded by taxi and moto taxi drivers all telling me what i needed to do to get to the border and cross the border .... finally after being overwhelmed i took a taxi to the Peruvian border control, went through with no problems and then we drove to the border. there was a Peruvian city and a Ecuadorian city on the border and it was a typical frontier town - looked like the old west. there was no customs here, it was another 5 km out of town. We started going down side streets and i had the feeling, this isn´t going to be good. we stopped and got out and the driver said he could not drive me to the bus station because he couldn't be in Ecuador with his car. there was a guy that met us when we stopped, a friend of the drivers and they were trying o explain what to do. basically this guy was going to escort me to the bus station and i was going to pay him a , hmm tip. Well we walked for about five minutes, arrived at the bus station and i gave him $2. i had just missed the noon bus and the next bus was at 3pm. i asked my guide and the person at the bus station if there were any other bus companies ... and of course they said yes but far away. anyway about 15 minutes later some Brits sowed up with their "guide" who charged them a $10 tax for walking them to the bus station. just another scam with cab drivers ..... oh, and i had lunch with the Brits and we took a walk afterwards and found another bus company about a block from the one that we were using and they had a bus that left a 1pm.

the next day it finally happened. i took a bus to a market in another city and on the way there we were passing a car when appeared in the on coming lane another bus. well we weren't making much progress to get by the car so the bus driver just cut off the car and caught the front end of the car. we didn't stop and i don't know if the bus driver new but i saw it happen and when we finally arrived at the bus station there was red paint (the color of the car) on the back of the bus.

some quick reflections on Ecuador. cab drivers don't honk at you, people in general don't honk their horns! people form lines for buses and don't rush the bus door when the bus arrives. people obey the traffic lights, not stop signs though. fewer people using the streets as bathrooms.

alright back to the blog. i met gene from Spain and Thais from Brazil and we traveled together for a few days. today (9/24) gene went back to Spain and Thais went to Columbia. anyway, we went from cuenca to ? alisio, spent the night and then took a "train"ride down the devils nose the next morning. after that we went to baños and Thais and i took a four wheeler to a waterfall. after that we all went to a "spa"for the 45 minute, $4 special spa. wasn't too bad, though we each were "locked" into a little steam box with just our heads poking out. Then there was a facial, a cold water plunge and a Jacuzzi.

we left baños ànd took a bus to quito, the centro del mundo, center of the earth.

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Photos

cuenca and surounding cities3
ok,my american friends wont get this, but my freinds from other other english speaking countries will!!

Comments

[Gary]

keep 'em coming
Nice work Dave, it's always interesting reading your blog, and looking at the photos.

[Buck]

Thanks
Im going there to retire and do volunteer work. Any places you would pick out to stay? [e-mail]