Cuenca

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Leaving our slacking days in Máncora behind, we booked a bus to go the Ecuadorian city Cuenca. We were told to go to the "Cifa International Terminal" in town to catch the bus and being in Peru, the so-called terminal turned out to be someone's house. We sat with a couple people in the hallway, while the rest of the passengers had to wait outside. There was nobody around to give us any information so when the bus didn't show up, this became more and more of a joke.

After an hour, the bus finally arrived and we were on our way to the border after all. We went to the bordertown Aguas Verdes and got our exit stamps in Peru without any problems despite the temporary passports, changed our remaining soles into US dollars, the Ecuadorian currency, had to change the bus there and crossed over to the Ecuadorian border in Huaquilles to get the entrance stamps and a new tire for the bus. This whole thing took us about three hours. It was Peruvian "laissez faire" at its best.

When we were finally in Ecuador, the trip went more smoothly and after about 5 hours we arrived in Cuenca. On the way, the landscape became more tropical and we passed through huge banana plantations. We are getting closer to the equator after all.

In Cuenca, we stayed at a super nice hostel, La Cigale. It was probably one of the best we stayed in and the restaurant was great. It is part of the "HoLa network" (http://www.holahostels.com/en/) which is an association of Latinamerican hostels that are environmentally friendly. You can sign up for free for a membership and get 10%!d(MISSING)iscount in the hostels. We can recommend it having stayed at a couple of HoLas so far.

The city itself is very pretty and green. It is surrounded by mountains and the river Río Tomebamba passes through. The center is an UNESCO world heritage site and some of the old buildings around town are covered in street art which is a nice mix. We were lucky enough to stroll through the city with some sunshine before a massive thunderstorm hit Cuenca and we had to hang out at the hostel for the rest of the day. Before leaving to Guayaquil, we went to the "Pumapungo" museum which hosts a nice ethnographic exhibition about the different indigeous groups of Ecuador and also a collection of shrunken heads, creepy stuff.

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