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Published: October 30th 2005
Paul & Gabi in a Paramo forest
These are the highest elevation trees in the world. They´re also 400-500 years old.¡Hola from Cuenca!
Day 7 of our trip. We have reached the most southern point of our expedition. After leaving Baños (Banyos), we took a four hour bus drive south to Alausi. A pretty uneventful trip - we´re getting used to the buses, and we think our first ride out of Quito was the worst, ummm, most exciting, so far. Alausi was pretty much just a stop on our way to Cuenca, but we´re glad we got there. It´s a small town without a lot going on. We saw lots of indigenous people with their beautiful, colorful clothing. There was a ´Barney´ circus in town, believe it or not, and the morning we were leaving we saw the 2 lions they were showing there. It was sad - very tiny lodging for the lions - but interesting too, to see the people´s reactions to them. Paul was taking a picture of the circus, and some small children were checking him out, and the digital camera. He showed them the picture on the camera, which they thought was way cool, but when he asked to take their picture, they all scattered and shook their heads ´No!´.
From Alausi we took another
Alausi
View from above the town. bus to Cuenca. This was another interesting ride. About 30 min. into the ride, the bus had to stop for a few minutes, and the driver got out and was checking something out behind the bus. We eventually got on the road again, for maybe another 30 min, when we did the same thing - this time in the middle of nowhere. We knew something was up when he put on his coveralls and grabbed some straps and went under the bus. Apparently something was going on with the exhaust system, but in 10 or 15 min we were on our way again. As we were driving through a town, we pulled up next to someone who was welding a pipe. Our driver asked him to weld our muffler, and in another 15 min we got on the road for good. It was pretty amusing.
Cuenca is a beautiful, colonial city. It´s very clean, and we feel safe here, for it being the 3rd largest city in the country. Yesterday we hired a guide to take us to Parque Nacional Cajas, a national park outside of Cuenca about an hour. We went up to about 12,000 feet, and got
Barney circus comes to Alausi
Who knew that Barney was such a world traveler?! a great hiking tour (in English, thank goodness), where the guide gave us and 4 other people, some natural history of the area. We got some more birds checked off our list, although not as many as we would have liked. We heard a toucan and trojan, but didn´t see any. Guess we´ll have to wait for the jungle for the best birds. It was interesting to learn that introduced trout have wiped out a lot of their native fish. We helped out with this cause by eating trout for lunch. We ate at a Columbian restaurant last night with a Swiss woman we met on our Cajas trip. It was nice to talk to someone other than each other. (ha ha!)
Today we went to a museum that had information about the Ecuadorian people, past and present. Part of the museum was in English, which was helpful for us. It also had some Incan ¨ruins¨outside the museum - I put ruins in quotes because they´re pretty obviously re-built. Still cool enough.
Tomorrow we´re heading north to Latacunga, and the Quilotoa loop. We´ll see how that goes - the loop sounds like an interesting trip where we might
Watching the lions
Some indigenous people in Alausi checking out the lions. need to walk a lot with all our stuff and wait hours in the weather for buses. But it´s supposed to be beautiful. We´ll try to catch up again a few days later, when we´re in Mindo, birdwatching.
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Meg
non-member comment
heehee
You know I love you, so don't take this the wrong way...I think you heard a trogon, not a trojan! :0 Sorry, too funny to pass up! Did you eat the guinea pigs or not? I've been waiting to hear...