Cuenca

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After an arduous journey, in which we travelled by local minibus from Mancora to Tumbes and then by local bus from Tumbes (stopping to change bus in Machala), we finally arrived in Cuenca absolutely exhausted.

Having done our research on the town prior to our arrival we knew where to stay - Posada del Angel - which didn´t disappoint - a great place in the heart of town.

With not much daylight left we dropped our things and headed out to get our bearings and for dinner. It wasn´t long before we were back in the hostal with Av suffering mildly with altitude sickness - nothing a good night´s sleep didn´t fix.

With only two nights in Cuenca we wasted no time in seeing the sights. Apart from being a lively, colourful city, Cuenca is famous for Panama hats. In fact Ecuador is the true home of the Panama hat - they were originally made in Ecuador then exported to Panama, where they gained their popularity during the gold rush and henceforth become known and named by where they became popular.

So, our first stop was the Panama hat factory or as Ecuadorian´s will say "sombrero de paja toquilla" factory of Rafael Paredes & Hijos, which is celebrating its 50th year of hat manufacturing in Cuenca.

Here we were given a guided tour of the factory and a demonstration of the hat finishing process. After finally deciding on suitable hats we were then escorted to the upper floors of the factory which, apart from housing a very western looking coffee shop decked out with comfy armchairs and the sound of Nora Jones, had a great balcony with fantastic views across the whole town and surrounding mountains. After enjoying the views of Cuenca we decided to lounge in the comfy armchairs for a while and enjoy some Ecuadorian coffee. Whilst there a couple of humming birds dropped in to join us for a drink too - check out the photo.

With our Panama hats in hand we headed along the river, which is still used by the locals for washing their clothes, to visit the Museo del Banco Central, including Pumapungo, where (can you believe it?) we found a Cypriot - Klitsa Antoniou, exhibiting her art! You can´t hold us down, we are everywhere!!

Anyway, the museum is quite interesting with information on the indigenous peoples of Ecuador and their customs, the most interesting being the gruesome practice of shrinking heads - in particular your enemies head, after killing him first obviously! The heads on show were pretty eerie, as although the heads have been shrunk to the size of a baseball they maintain the same features all in proportion, along with facial hair and with the lips stitched together to stop the evil spirits contained within that persons head from escaping. The practice has obviously been outlawed but they now use sloth heads instead.....how a sloth becomes an enemy I dont know!

With the sightseeing over we decided to buy our bus tickets to Baños and then headed back to the centre of town in search of a suitcase in preparation for some serious shopping in Quito!

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Comments

[Lou]

Humming bird photo
Did you guys take that? Very cool!! Looks like it should be from some nature magazine!