Cuenca & surrounding peublos

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If you are blonde and a girl, be prepared to be stared at constantly, have comments and blokes approach you all the time and even get followed or flashed at in places! This place is INCREDIBLY conservative and pretty hard core on the Catholic religion.

Rio Tomebamba divides Cuenca and has, along its banks, old colonial buildings plus washerwomen laying out their clothes. Also, not in the guidebooks, kids sniffing glue and a whole load of perverts.

The markets here are all pretty much centrally located. And there are loads of them of various sizes. Markets for fruit and veg, markets for flowers, markets for crafts and, of course, markets for the famous Panama hat.

Parque Nacional Cajas

A huge park (28,800 hectare) with loads of lakes, mountains to climb and no-one else around. We did a 5hr hike to Cerro Amarillo, a mountain 4451m high. We read in the guide books and were told by several locals, to expect cold weather and to bring a lot of protective clothing. Hence, I packed my Low Alpine jacket and fleece.

We couldn´t have had a sunnier day.

We got the bus to drop us off after the Park entrance (avoiding the $10 Gringo entrance tax) as we decided to do a hike usually undertaken with a guide. There is no marked path and it involves some serious climbing at the peak. But, the views are absolutely stunning, really impressive. Not a house in site, no sign of human life, just pure mountains stretching out far into the horizon. Beautiful.

We were lucky enough to have magnificently clear views once at the top, and also lucky enough to be alive after the "near death" scramble on the loose rocks to get to the summit.

Giron

Is a very small peublo where you can get your eyebrows waxed for 50 cents! I took the bus from Cuenca and then the truck to the waterfalls. I decided to see both waterfalls as the first only takes 8 mins to walk to. However, the second is a totally different walk. Very varied, you pass through fields, jungle and open ridges to finally get to the top. It took me about 3 hrs and the fog really rolled in on the descent.

There are two paths to this second waterfall. Don´t make the same mistake as me and two Dutch guys who killed themselves a couple of weeks before me, on the treacherous "path". I attempted it and then after slipping and sliding in the mud, thought this is crazy, it cannot be a path and returned back to the entrance and asked. The correct path starts at the bottom of the road.

Gualaceo

Lovely town, especially on a sunny day when all the locals seem to take a picnic to Rio Santa Barbara with their families. There was not another tourist in site, but amazingly I was not stared at too much. In fact, when I started playing football with the local shoeshine boys I just came across generosity, with one mother offering me some juice.

There are markets in every town, always colourful with amazing fruits and vegetables for sale. Everything seems to be bundled up into $1 bags. Simple if you´re not very good at maths, but sometimes it´s nice to just have one banana.

The comida typica is "Tamal de Papa", which is boiled mashed potatoe with meat and herbs, wrapped and cooked in a plam leaf. Alternatively, egg and cheese if you are veggie. 10 out of 10 for presentation and not bad on the taste either.

I still have no camera so cannot upload photo´s. However, some girls that I met have promised to send me their pics so, as soon as I receive them you can see what these places are like.

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Photos

Cajas
Domonique, me, Amber and Stephanie

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At the top, after the hard scramble.

Cajas
Hitch hiking. You never know what you´re going to get and we got three guys who liked speed!