Two Months in Ecuador

After 23 hours between two back to back bus rides we made it to Lima, Peru, with two months and one country under our belts. Here is a brief wrap up of how we spent our last week and a half in Ecuador.

Emily left off our last entry just as we got to Cuenca. Cuenca ended up being a very nice place. There are a ton of universities in Cuenca which always gives a nice feel to a city and the cobblestone streets and plenty of colonial architecture make it a fun place to explore. Add to this a completely agreeable climate and plenty of pastoral countryside surrounding the city and you may have the reason that we found more ex-patriots here than anywhere else we have been. There are tons of retired gringos from all over...mostly the U.S. though. On our second night in Cuenca we met up with a couple of friends we met and planned our trip to the Parque Nacional Cajas.


Cajas is a huge, high, beautiful and not very popular park just outside of Cuenca. The next morning Emily, Maite, Colm and myself met up and set out for a day hike in the park. We had been told that conditions can get rough and altitude can be an issue so we were planning to do a 4 or 5 hour hike but once we got to the ranger station, the ranger was convinced that we needed to do the 8 mile, 7 hour hike. And when a ranger is pushing you to do one trail over another, it is hard to say no. Plus, besides a short climb which was shown on the map, the rest was all downhill in a nice valley.

Globitos

Emily appreciating the climb to above 12,000 ft.

Well the ranger was right of course, the trail he suggested was amazing. Despite the two hour climb which took us well over 13,000 ft. we enjoyed some amazing views of green peaks, mountain lakes and tons of wildflowers. It was yet another wonder to find in a country the size of Nevada but with the diversity of an entire continent. The weather even held out too! Right until about 15 minutes after our awesome lunch of avocado and potato chip sandwiches. We got about 5 minutes warning of light sprinkles and then all of a sudden it was hailing on us. Then came thunder, harder hail, then hard rain, all of which made walking on the smooth granite rocks a little precarious. ¨Resvaloso¨ is a word we have learned well after the jungle...it means slippery. Luckily, after 30 minutes or so the rain slowed and eventually became a constant drizzle again which was much nicer and allowed us to finish the hike in good spirits with taste of adventure. By the time we got to the bottom we were all soaked head to toe and cold to the point of our fingers not working so well at intricate tasks like zippers, shoelaces etc. After learning that we had to wait at least a half hour for a bus we almost despaired but soon spotted resturaunt pumping smoke out of two chimneys. While we waited for the bus we enjoyed some hot coffee and warmed our fingers by the fire.


The next day our friends were heading to Vilcabamba, a village in a valley south of Cuenca famous for residents that live to be well past 100 years old. We had heard so many things about Vilcabamba and its famous Izchcayluma hostel/resort. This post is getting kind of long and it would really be too easy to go on and on about how great it is there. So instead I´ll post some pictures of our trail ride, our epic hike and some views from our hostel which we expect will be the nicest places we will stay during the whole trip. It was so nice we failed in our attempt to leave not once but twice before we finally told ourselves we had to be moving on.

View from the hostel dining room

Epic Ridge Trail

Very Good

Howdy Partner

So we left Ecuador on a totally positive note. It is an awesome country where we were glad to spend double the time that we plan to spend in any other country on this trip. Someday we will almost certainly go back.