Cuenca

After 4 days in Guayaquil , which is at sea level, I took the bus to Cuenca, 2530 m. high, a good place to start getting used to higher altitudes. Cuenca is , I dare say, near Cuzco, the most beautiful city I have so far seen in South America. The historical center, which is quite large, a Unesco World Heritage site, with cobble stone streets and beautiful architecture everywhere. 

a fantastic cathedral, the foto does not show how huge it is

and unfortunately way too much traffic. 

embedded in a beautiful landscape

beautiful plazzas

I love the flower market, with its vendors, Ecuadorian indigenous women wearing their typical clothes

Quite tiring, to sit there te whole day waiting for customers.

selling beeautiful flower arrangements

Near the cathedral, some beautifully dressed indigenous men playing their music

and, on January 17 (is that when the Ecuatorians commemorate a second christmas? I couldn't figure it out), a truck full of bigger and little angels and a Santa Claus, playing quite loud beautiful Ecuadorian Christmas music, driving through the city center

It's just too cute

What I haven't figured out yet, if it is supposedly not dangerous here, why many small grocery stores don't open their doors but sell through a little counter in the middle of iron bars, like this one:

and all taxis in Ecuador have a video camera filming the guests , transferring this to some central station so the police can react quickly if he is threatened and every driver has an emergency button which he can press if he is assulted. I have not seen this in any other country. May be not a bad idea!

Today I visited a very special private archeological museum. It belongs to an Ecuatorian professor of history from the university of Cuenca. He collected for a long time fantastic ancient ceramics which people had found and sold him and also other things and made a very impressive exposition in a beautiful house in the historical center. Here some of his exhibits which I love:

Aren't these ceramics beautiful?

I think I'll stick around for some time in Cuenca, there is so much to see here.