23/06/2019 – Cuenca, Ecuador

We got up and had an 08:30 breakfast in our homestay, prepared by our host Gary. He has retired here from the USA and uses bookings and airbnb for a little bit of income. It is a fairly big but empty house, with few furnishings and belongings in sight. Gary is vegan, so our breakfast was too. We had coffee, fruit and some ‘humitas’ – maiz flour cake things that are cooked and wrapped in corn leaves. Then we got ourselves sorted, wrapped up in thermals, puffa jackets, hats and scarves and left for the bus terminal to organise our travel for tomorrow. We went and got some information from a couple of different bus companies and also visited the tourist information for some advice. After weighing up a few options we decided to travel and do the border crossing tomorrow during the day, so bought our tickets for that. We then caught a taxi into town and visited the Pumapungo museum, which has mock ups and artefacts from different Ecuadorian indigenous cultures. There are replicas of different types of houses and demonstrations of different ways of life, and there are also some shrunken heads on display! We stopped at a nearby café and had a snack and a coffee. After this we walked along the beautiful and green Rio Tomebamba and to the museum of modern art. The building apparently used to be ‘a home for the insane’, if those walls could talk! There was some colourful Ecuadorian modern art, but the actual building was more interesting. Lots of archways and little squares.

Our walk through Cuenca.

Many stairs.

Some modern art.

Our own modern art.

And some more.

Then we walked along to the new cathedral, which is called ‘new’ because it was built recently, in 1885! It was huge and decadent. Along the road leading to this were numerous stalls selling sweets, doughnuts and chocolate, and a little flower market too.

Sweeties.

Flower market.

Some of the Ecuadorians are so tiny, even compared to me! Some of the older generation were coming out of the cathedral in traditional dress, capes and hats and long velvet skirts. Something we have noticed throughout our travels are the cars driving past with kids clambering around inside, or on the laps of other passengers, stuffed in, no seatbelts to be seen, how dangerous! We walked along to a lonely planet recommendation ‘café Nucallacta’ where we had some artesan roasted Ecuadorian coffee, it didn’t let us down! By this point it was about 16:00 and the city was pretty much completely shut down. Sundays in South America are slow and quiet. So we walked back along the riverside to our homestay ‘Casa Rumi’. We got our comfies on and updated the diary and chatted to our host Gary. Throughout the day we took some photos on the phone and sent them to Gilly who lived and worked here about 15 years ago! I wander how much it has changed. We received an email from our hostel in Banos whom we had contacted yesterday, they have our adaptor and charger! Now we just have to come up with a plan to retrieve it!