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Published: September 21st 2009
River Walk Into Town
The water's low right now, but it's always interesting walking into the city along one of Cuenca's four rivers.One of the great things about Cuenca is that you can drink the water! Right from the tap. It tastes terrific... with no worries about a "crummy tummy" they say. Hallelujah!
The water "we locals" drink comes from some 200 glacial lakes in the nearby Cajas National Park. It doesn't get any better than that. After wandering around Mexico and Central and South America and buying bottled water everywhere, good drinking water is enough reason to move here. Never mind that Cuenca is beautiful and safe with endless fascinating cloud formations and a cultured population, many of whom under 30 speak pretty good English. WOW! You can drink the water!
Water or not, today was just one of those perfect days though, at least weather-wise. Warm temps—but not too warm—blue skies, fluffy clouds. A great day for a Sunday stroll. We walked from the west side of the city to the east side (again), following the grassy trails along the river, hoping to make it "museum day." On the map, it looked like the Museum of Modern Art was near the center of town and just a couple of streets up from the river. The problem was it was
UP. UP a very large hill. To get there, you had to climb 10,293 steps... at least.
We decided to skip the stairs, circle around and hit the museum after we went to La Esquina de los Artes, which was described as a place for designers, artisans, and artists to "reveal the different processes involved in the creation of their products, including ceramics, wood crafts, textiles, glass, embroidery, jewelry, and straw hats."
So I was expecting this large building where we could watch beautiful indigenous people at work spinning, weaving, carving, sculpting, etc., and maybe learn something along the way.
Instead, it was a small shopping center that was more Carmel or Beverly Hills than the works-in-progress studios that I'd envisioned. Famed Ecuadorian ceramicist Eduardo Vega has a shop there with some of his beautiful work and we found a designer mirror almost identical the one we have in our living room—but there was nary a working artisan in sight.
I was kind of glad the Museum of Medicine wasn't open when we passed it though. It's supposed to have a bizarre collection of old bed pans, ancient xray machines... and corpses casually laid out on
the floor like they are waiting for yoga class. (Watch your step?) We'll skip that one, but we'll return to the archeological museum we visited last year at the Central Bank, which I don't think is a bank at all. It does have a fine auditorium though, where we attended a wonderful symphony performance with a 65-member, full tux and gowns orchestra. Cuenca also has a couple of native cultures museums, closed today naturally.
We never did make it back to the Modern Museum before it closed... but we did stop by the main plaza to see all the action. Unfortunately,there was no action. Downtowns in Ecuador on Sundays are pretty deserted. There were some people in the park, but it's nothing like Sundays in the plazas in Mexico with music and dancing and wonderful carrying on....
At least we're mastering the bus system. For 25-cents you can go pretty much anywhere in Cuenca, and after walking somewhere between 3-4 miles into town, we jumped on one that took us home... at least most of the way.
It was just one of those days.
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Georgina Russell
non-member comment
Potential is there!
I try not to get too excited, but I am! Can hardly wait to get there to see for myself.