November 28, 2016
Today we woke up early to try to catch photos of the sun rising over Cuenca. Unfortunately, it was cloudy, but we were still able to see some wonderful scenery with the low-lying clouds in front of the nearby mountains. Ran back to the hotel to catch breakfast before we went to Museo de las Culturas Aborigenes, which houses over 5,000 archeological pieces of ancient Ecuadorian cultures. It was quite interesting.
Then we had a cup of coffee and a snack at a coffee shop before we headed to the hotel to check out.
Caught a taxi (so easy!) to the bus terminal and went inside to figure out how to get to Guayaquil (why-a-keel). We had been told that busses between Cuenca and Guayaquil should be quite frequent, but as Americans, sometimes it’s hard to just go with the flow. I sometimes need to remind myself that it’s not their first rodeo, it’s just my first rodeo here. We found the tourist office in the bus station, and I asked (in Spanish) about the autobus to Guayaquil. The woman working the counter answered back in English of course, with the most squeaky little voice. Her instructions were impeccable and the next bus was in only 10 minutes. We bought tickets from a counter, which is unusual here, as usually you just pay the driver’s assistant when you hop on board. We got tripped up a little, as once you have your ticket, you still need to put a dime in the turnstile to enter the platform. Not sure about that, but what’s a dime? Onboard the bus we randomly chose some seats, which turned out to be our assigned seats. Again, this ride is a little different from the other buses we had ridden. Nathan may have said something about us being fortunate, and I promptly told him not to say it out loud. We’ve learned from other travels that once you talk out loud about how nothing has gone wrong yet, something promptly does. The bus pulled away from the station (with a vendor hawking green tea pouches and a laxative of some sort) and within a mile of the station promptly broke down. The Ecuadorians did not like this at all and started to become agitated, got off the bus, and go outside to hassle the driver. One passenger got back on the bus to tell the remaining passengers that they were sending a new bus in 10 minutes. Sure enough, in 15 to 20 minutes, we all got off the bus and onto a new one. I whispered to Nathan “should we tell the Ecuadorians that it’s our fault the bus broke down?”
After that, we had no more issues and we settled in for the 4-hour drive to Guayaquil, which was quite scenic.
Once at the Guayaquil station, we checked on times for tomorrow’s journey and caught a cab to our hotel. Our afternoon and evening were spent walking to Parque Bolivar and the Malecon 2000. Parque Bolivar is a park in the middle of downtown that is filled with iguanas, turtles, and pigeons too. It’s the strangest thing. There is literally nothing keeping these iguanas on this block and they are everywhere. And you can walk right up to them and touch them if you are daring.
The Malecon is a long riverwalk filled with restaurants, activities, and such. The city has something like 2.5 million people, but the area where we are, downtown/riverwalk is supposed to be perfectly safe (use common sense, of course). After being in Cuenca, it feels incredibly not safe, and I already can’t wait to leave tomorrow.
We don’t typically post about political things, but at dinner, we learned of Fidel Castro’s death and Trump’s asinine comments celebrating his death. Now I feel even more that we are unsafe in this huge city. As the president of the USA, you cannot make such comments without jeopardizing the welfare of Americans abroad. Nathan and I try very hard to be good ambassadors for the USA when we are in other countries, and a man like that does (the collective) us no favors. That’s my soapbox, and I’m off it now.
Overall, we’ve felt quite safe here, and even as though the locals are watching out for us. In Chugchilan, it was locals pointing us in the right direction while hiking. In Quito, it was locals helping us with when to get on and off the buses, as well as insisting a beggar type stop hassling us. Very much the kind of feeling we had in Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic.
Tomorrow is beach time in a much smaller city, and we can’t wait.