Colonial Cuenca

Following Baños, we packed our bags and headed on a 5 hour bus ride to Cuenca in the south of Ecuador. The city is known for its beautiful architecture and it did not disappoint. It looked just how I expected a Spanish city would look like, and as always, there was a spacious Plaza de Armas (or main square) in the centre of town. We arrived reasonably late in the day so not much was achieved apart from having some dinner at a sports bar (think Sports Cafe in Wellington) and an early night to rest up from our travels.

The only full day in Cuenca was used exploring the city and checking out the architecture. The people here seemed a bit more European looking than those in Quito, and so a number of the women also matched the architectural beauty of the city!

The group had a reasonable night on the booze, and for those of you familiar with the barmaids at Rosie O´Gradys, they had them in Cuenca too - except they are called Jirafas (or giraffes in English) for obvious reasons. As per usual the beers were followed by a couple of Baileys for good measure! All in all a great evening of group bonding was had and needless to say the bus ride the following day (including the infamous Ecuador-Peru border crossing) was a little tough, but that´s a story for another day.

One interesting point about Cuenca is that a number of locals still wash their clothes in the river and lay them out on the riverbank to dry. I didn´t trust this method so I decided to take my laudry to a lavanderia instead. Who knows, they probably use the river anyway and some of the clothes below are probably mine.