I took the bus from Alausi to Cuenca with two friends I had made at the hostel: Rory from Ireland and Marnie from London. It took just over 4 hours. My Airbnb hosts were super slow to respond to my request, thus I ended up staying at the same hostel that Marnie had booked. This was a very good thing though.
The hostel- El Cafecito- on the Plaza Civica- is rather unique. Tony- the owner- has lived in many countries, and in Ecuador for 23 years. He provides all incoming guests with a great deal of information and all to do activities mapped out on Maps.me. The hostel has many stairs and thus the key delivery system is one that I have not seen before- ring the secret doorbell ring and the key will be parachuted down from the rooftop 🙂 .
Arriving on Saturday afternoon we go to the Mercado, opposite side of the Square, and have pig on a spit with corn, potatoes and onions. This is a staple with all the ladies selling it- we are talking about 10 pigs here! It’s a good feed for 3USD.
Rory and I decide to go out this evening- the last opportunity in the week to go out. We found a club by the river and arrived after 10pm… however it was still pretty quiet. We had a drink or two while the place filled up a bit. We hit the dance floor at about 11pm and never left J Made friends with a group of Ecuadorians who spoke a bit of English and had a jolly good time! As a matter of fact, Rory had a better time, leaving with one of the ladies and was lost in action for the next couple of daysJ Everyone in the dorm was asking me what I had done with Rory that he had not returned . He gained himself and instant wife plus 2 kids!!
Marnie, Chris (German Biologist/Geographer) and I went out to breakfast and coffee and later Marnie and I went to Pumapungo Museum. This museum has some of the most varied displays ever- Inca ruins, aviary, archaeology, art and ethnographics – including the shrunken heads. No photos allowed inside though. Follow this link for a short explanation of the head shrinking customs of this tribe here.
Cuenca is a small city, relatively speaking, of 600,000 people. Its historical centre is protected under UNESCO world heritage. It is thus pleasant to walk around and as our group discovered- has great coffee and ice cream shops- to the point where Chris had all our daily coffee stops planned as he is coffee crazy! I’m not sure where I should be having coffee now 🙂
With all our socialising there isn’t much time to actually sightsee 🙂 We did however have some time to visit the Panama Hat Museum. Chris, Michael (volunteer at the hostel from USA) and I had an English tour lasting 20 minutes and covering how the hats are made. The hats were named as Panama hats as President Roosevelt had seen them and taken a liking to them when he saw the workers working on the Panama Canal wearing them. It then became critical for Ecuador to let the world know that it was them who actually made these hats, but the name stuck!
The hats are made from palm tree leaf fibres, the finer the fibres, the finer the hat weaving. The most expensive hat ever made took one year (3 hours per day) to make. It is priced at 20 000 USD! There is a considerable difference between the weaves –to the touch and sight.
It was a sad evening when Chris left for his flight, then a couple of hours later Michael, Liza, Swazi and Rory all caught the night bus to Peru.
