Made it to Cuenca
We arrived in Guayaquil on Friday afternoon and then turned around and left for Cuenca on Saturday. It's humid, hot and kinda ugly in Guayaquil. It also doesn't get us any closer to our goal of heading south. We went to a mall today in Guayaquil to get some supplies and we both survived remarkably well. There were an awful lot of American stores there, with their advertisements in English, it was weird; Radio Shack, Tommy Hillfiger, Kenneth Cole, Taco Bell, KFC, PIzza Hut, Burger King, & Sunglass Hot (no really same font & everything). The only ones of those we went into was Radio Shack as we were looking for a small battery powered radio. That would have come in handy in Riobamba. kragen bought some really nice slacks and had them hemmed in pretty quick time. I bought a new purse as my other one I bought in Quito for $3 broke in two places. We saw a surreal sight of a guy dressed up in robot suit. He was standing around waiting for kids to have their photo taken with him and he shook his finger at me when I snapped a shot of him with my camera. Unfortunately, it came out blurry. We headed for the bus terminal after our shopping excursion and got a bus to Cuenca from Guayaquil. The inter-provencal buses here are of much higher quality than I was expecting. I was expecting crappy buses filled with people and their livestock. No such thing. The buses are either of Greyhound quality or better. Today's was like a tour bus it was so nice and thank GOD they didn't play a video. Yesterday's was obnoxious - Benchwarmers - with a lot of the cast of Saturday Night Live from the 90s. It was god awful. My main complaint is that they will not turn on the overhead reading lights, so it's necessary to have a flashlight with you if you want to continue reading after the sun goes down. The rides are a bit hairy, but the roads up & down the mountains are much wider than I expected again, and it's not like we've lost a wheel over the edge or anything like that, so no worries, right? ;-)
So now we've been down and up the Andes. My ears like it better up, even if my cardiovascular system has a harder time. We've arrived in a beautiful hostel called Cabañas Yanuncay in the outskirts of Cuenca. It's kind of far from downtown, but it's really pretty and it's surrounded by nature. kragen and I are both happy here. Maria and her husband, Umberto run the place and it looks like Umberto made a lot it. Cabins dot the field and the hillside, and it seems there are multiple rooms to each cabin; ours holds four and we're at the top of a steep set of stairs. Umberto made the stairs in the main house and they're gorgeous. The underside is half of a polished tree trunk and runs up the stairs like a thick spine. Our room is made of wood, bamboo, brick and whitewashed stonework. It smells like a sauna and reminds me of houses in Bolinas. Just funky enough and in tune with nature enough to give it that homey feel. =) The view from the bus-ride into Cuenca, shows the town to be a much more beautiful city than either Quito or Guayaquil. I don't know how long we will stay here, but I'm happy to be back up in the Andes. Me no likey the humidity. It's nice and cool here.
Sunday we stayed at the hostel, caught up on sleep and kragen took apart small electronics to examine. He was overjoyed at how complex the radio and the video game were because they were so cheap. In the afternoon we took turns doing the laundry and it's now hanging up on the line to dry. There's not much sun here, but hopefully they will dry by this evening. I've been wearing the same shirt for three days. We should have started our laundry sooner, but that wasn't really possible. It took us about two hours to wash all our clothes, but they're done. There's a very cute llama here and he's happily munching away at the grass below the drying clothes, and not nibbling on our clothes, which is a good thing. His name is Camello. The family here is exceedingly nice and the breakfasts are really good. There's granola with thin slices of coconut, fresh yogurt and jam, fresh fruit, hot croissants and tea and really good scrambled eggs. We continue to practice our broken Spanish with the family. Umberto spent some time in California and in Florida, so he helps us out when we get stuck. This afternoon, we're going to meet with another person that kragen met at the conference in Quito. Should be good times.