Cuenca

Three friends and I decided to skip class on Thursday and Friday to go to the colonial town of Cuenca in southern Ecuador. We took a night bus from Quito on Wednesday night. The bu ride was about nine and a half hours. Cuenca is a really cool city. It's much more European than Quito and churches are absolutely everywhere. They have a cathedral that's almost completely made out of marble which is pretty sweet. In our first two hours there we visited 6 churches and one gun shop that was attached to a church. We decided to have a thanksgiving lunch. Since we are in Ecuador, I figured guinea pig made more sense than turkey, so I split one with one of my friends. It was better than the one I had in Latacunga. In the evening, we challenged a group of Ecuadorians to a soccer game. It was fun, although we did end up losing.

On Friday we went to Parque Cajas. Cajas is one of the most awesome places I've been to. It's a huge park with loads of lakes, mountains, and trees to climb. We sort of stayed on the paths, but spent a good portion of the day going cross country and blazing our own trails. There were occasional llamas along the way as well. There were some sweet forests with little rivers going through. We also found a cave, so we went spelunking for a while, which was as awesome as it sounds. At the end of our hike, it started hailing.

Saturday we went to some old Incan ruins called Ingapirca. They were kinda cool, but not as impressive as I had hoped. According to my guide book they were one of the top ten things to do in Ecuador. While they were sort of impressive, we only had two hours to see them, and 5 hours in bus to get there and back, so I did not think it was worth it. However, after having seen them, I only need to climb Cotopaxi (which is planned for in two weeks) and then I've done all ten so that's pretty cool. We took the last bus back home at 9 in the evening. We had to leave Saturday night, because today is the Ecuadorian Censo. The Censo is their census and is really stupid. Everything is shut down and you have to stay in your house all day. Nobody is allowed outside. Supposedly you can get arrested or fined if you are outside your home. Why? I have no idea. It might be to make sure that you're not hiding anyone who's not supposed to be there, but seeing as I was asleep when they came and didn't check, it's not very effective. Anyway, I'm just stuck inside all day so I was catching up on sleep. I got back at four in the morning with the night bus we took.

Ingapirca

The cathedral in Cuenca