Week 104: to Cuenca: from the forest to the third largest city in Ecuador

March 23, 2017

During the night the weather clears up and we wake up to blue skies. After making coffee and our oatmeal, we finish packing and push our way back to the road. We have a couple hundred meters more to climb, at about 12km from our campsite we reach the highest point and start a long nice downhill.

There are nice views over the green valleys on both sides of the road. We stop just past Cumbe and find a nice second breakfast with real coffee at a small restaurant. The owner speaks English. We add our own salami and cheese to the egg sandwich.

As our downhill peters out we get into busier traffic on its way to Cuenca. There is a "bikelane" marked on the shoulder, except that it is covered in mud and gravel for most of the way. Cuenca is the third largest city in Ecuador but we avoid most of it by taking the northern ring road towards the hostel we had picked. There is construction going on for a new light-rail system and sections are narrow or blocked-off.

We picked Mi Casa hostel based on its reviews on booking.com and their price, but they do not have a double room available for tonight. After checking another place across the road, we decide we do want to stay at Mi Casa. We take a bunkbed for the first night and reserve a double room for the next two nights. The bunkroom has space for 6 people, only one other bed is filled by a Swiss backpacker. Each bunk has a curtain to draw around the bed.

It is still early, we walk to town, have cerviche for lunch and walk around the plaza. The "new cathedral" is very nice, we pay the fee to go up one of the bell towers for a nice view over the city. Just as we walk back to the hostel, the daily rainstorm breaks.

In the evening we walk out to Fabianos were we have a very nice and huge pizza.