more Cuenca and surroundings

Dear everybody

If you intend to travel with an organized tour, you'll never know what you are missing, like sitting in a local bus, chatting with an indigenous woman with a chicken in a basket on her lap, eating delicious cheap food in local markets, staying everywhere as long as you like, not to mention the freedom of , after reading that it is going to rain the next 10 days in the mountains and the peaks will be in the clouds, change your itinerary- so I decided to fly to Cartagena in north Colombia and do my trip the other way around- going from there south, visiting Colombia first and then returning to Ecuador. I am sitting in the plane to Cartagena right now, good oportunity to write my blog.

I stayed 4 days in Cuenca, enjoyed the beauty of the city and its people

, took a local bus to Gualaceo to see the Sunday market,

enjoyed watching the old women peeling beans and chatting

had a wonderful lunch at, you won't believe it, one of these little restaurants

Can you believe that, they fry a whole pig, just put it on the counter aand cut off pieces for the people who come to eat.

From Gualaceo to Chordelegg, a little town famous for its jewelrey makers who make beautiful jewelry of gold and silver which is mainly exported to Europe and the USA. 

Chordelegg is a cute little town with a pretty church

It was raining. it is interesting that the indigenous women don't use an umbrella, they only protect their precious hats from the rain with a plastic bag.

From Chordelegg I took a bus to a little village called Principal at the end of some valley with the hope of seeing a beautiful volcano there but unfortunately it was raining and the peak was in the clouds.

On the way to Principal an old indigenous woman who was sitting next to me asked me if I have family in Principal. When I said no, she just couldn't believe it and kept asking me why I was going there if I had no family there. I think the explanation - to see a volcano, was completely ununderstandable for her.

Principal is a very small village with a fantastic scenery ( as much as I could see of it in the rain) and a cute little church in the small piazza. When I arrived people were gathering for the Sunday missa and in the church they were playing "The Sound of Silence" from Simon and Garfunkel. When the priester arrived everybody started singing some beautiful Ecuadorian music. I loved it. Here is the church from inside and outside. What you can't see on the picture is the simplicity of the altar, the photographs on the wall, it all looks very poor.

and I guess, after the missa, if it is not raining, the kids or their fathers play football in front of the church, the gathering point of the village.

When I walked down the little main street I was happy and fascinated to see the following:

Isn't it wondeful, that they have a homeopath in such a tiny village just in the middle of nowhere? The woman in whose house I had rented a room in Cuenca, who lived there all her life, had never heard of Principal, not much more than an hour away.

By the way, her house was not easy to get in, and it was not a fancy villa, just a normal, not beautiful house. When I arrived, she gave me 3 keys ( none to my room!). First I had to stick both hands through the iron bars at the entrance to, with an acrobatic feat, open a lock which was hanging inside, not fun when it was raining. Then, again, with a second key, I had to stick my hands through the bars and unlock the door, which was not possible from outside. After I went into the yard I had to lock everything and go up some stairs to the door of the house. There I had to open some iron bars with a handle and unlock the third door. My room had no lock but, Monica - the owner - said, this was no problem. It was vey safe inside. 

My room unfortunately faced the main road so I spent half of the first afternoon in Cuenca looking for ear plugs. On Friday evening there was loud music in the restaurant downstairs- at least the music was mostly nice. My bathroom was so tiny I could hardly turn around there and the opening to step into the shower so narrow that I had to be careful these 4 days not to eat to much, otherwise I might not have been able to get in and take a shower. Monica said nobody had ever complained about that room. Can you believe it?

During my stay in Cuenca I visited all the museums there, among them the museo de arte extremo or Something like that . Those are two of the lamps in the exhibition and the rest is not better. I guess today you can call anything art. 

And when it started raining like crazy (almost every afternoon) I ran to my favorite Cafe Raymipampa near the cathedral for a delicious tea, Ecuadorian poatoe soup with avocado and cheese inside and wifi. I love theirt lamps. 

Isn't this a wonderful way of using broken dishes? This is real art! 

and this one is cute too:

Cuenca has an altitude of more than 2500 m. In the evening and in the morning it is real cold, I needed a pulover and a jacket. At noon, if the sun shines, it gets so hot you have to walk around with a t- shirt and sandals. When it rains, the rain is usually so heavy that you cannot even walk around with an umbrella without getting soaked. There are astonishing many beautiful villas in Cuenca and the surrounding villages. You get the impression most people must be rich there. There are also many retired Americans living there.

Not only grocery stores keep their stores barred and sell their goods through a small opening in the bars. Many other stores do that too, like that laundry, and this in a city that is supposed to be not dangerous at all. What do the dangerous cities in this country look like?

Just a few more impressions of Cuenca:

Have a good night!