Lori's Travels

Monday started out very sunny and it promised to be a little warmer day than Sunday, maybe 70 degrees. We had decided to devote this day to visit Amaru Bioparque, a nonprofit zoo that rescues animals from bad situations like circuses, traffickers, or ones illegally kept as pets. It’s on the edge of Cuenca, high on a hill, providing a great view of the city but also very steep ups and downs on the one-way path that leads through the animal exhibits. We took the Tranvía and a taxi to get there, arriving about 9:30, not long after it opened. There was maybe only one other visitor there; we nearly had it to ourselves.

The park is large and has a very large collection of animals, mostly from Ecuador, although they also have a few African lions that weren’t visible today. Many birds, including two critically endangered Andean Condors, macaws, parakeets, guans, ducks, and others. There was a White-throated Toucan that was extremely tame, allowing Nathan to get very close for photos and even to pet it lightly.

They also had ocelots, jaguars, coatis, many snakes including the very venomous fer-de-lance (terciopelo) viper, Galapagos tortoises, llamas, deer, many amphibians, endangered Andean spectacled bears, two-toed sloths, and lots of other animals. We spent three hours seeing the park, visiting each exhibit and traveling the path between them. It was quite a strenuous walk but very interesting and well worth the $8 entrance fee (only $4 if you’re 65+).

When we finished, the parking area attendant called a taxi for us. It was a small pickup truck with a club cab for passengers, labeled “transporte mixto” in Spanish, which can transport both people and cargo. Nathan asked the driver to take us to the San Blas Church, where there is a nearby restaurant he had been to previously. On the way, we traveled on some of the Pan-American Highway which is a 6-lane divided highway in that location.

Lunch was incredibly inexpensive, costing just $7 for the two of us. I had noodles with a mushroom sauce, an excellent hominy, bean, lettuce and tomato salad, and watermelon juice. Nathan had vegetarian lasagna, salad and juice. It was a place filled by locals, very informal, cheap, and delicious.

After lunch, we walked through the historical part of the city back to the Tranvía line. I was pretty tired from the zoo hiking and my full stomach slowed me down even more, so I was happy to be heading back to the apartment. After relaxing during the afternoon, Nathan walked a couple blocks to the nearest small market to pick up some vegetables and then made a healthy chicken and vegetable stew for dinner.

Sunday is a good day to visit the historic heart of Cuenca because it’s quieter: not very many stores open nor so many cars. We decided to take a bus tour starting from the large cathedral square on this pretty morning. It had been a little cooler than normal overnight, about 48 degrees, and had warmed up to 55 around 9:30 a.m. when we departed for downtown. The year-round normals are about 50-55 degrees at night and 65-70 during the day, and it’s partly sunny pretty much every day. When you’re in the sun, it feels quite a bit warmer than 65 because the sun is so direct here.

We arrived in downtown Parque Calderón and bought tickets for the next bus tour to be given in English that would start at 10:30. Until the bus came, we sat on a bench in the park where there were many other people enjoying the morning. Three young people approached us and a young man introduced himself in English as a university student, saying his friend was learning English and could he interview us for his class assignment. We said sure and the second student asked Nathan a few questions about obesity, health, and opinions about health habits as the young woman recorded it on video. The interviewer’s English was much weaker than his friend who had made the introductions. Next, I was interviewed with the same questions. When he was done, I asked them when Ecuadorians start learning English in school, and learned that it’s 4th grade. The young man with really good English was majoring in it at the university, while the interviewer was taking an English class but majoring in accounting.

A few minutes later, Nathan and I got on the tour bus and took seats on the open-air upper deck. As the bus started, we heard the tour guide over the sound system narrating the tour in Spanish first, then in very poor English. I actually understood more of the Spanish descriptions than the English ones, her pronunciation was so bad. Despite that, we enjoyed the trip around the city, which culminated at a high viewpoint called the Mirador de Turi. From here it was easy to see all of Cuenca nestled in the basin between mountains. We could even see Nathan’s apartment building on the other side of the city. He reminded me that my camera could take video, so that’s what I did.

It was difficult to take photos from the bus as we were touring, so I’ve only posted one here: a typical electric pole with a huge mess of wires connected. It must be tough for power company workers to sort them all out!

After the bus tour, we ate lunch at a restaurant Nathan had visited several times when he first moved to Cuenca and stayed in the historical district. It served a mix of international dishes and I had a vegetarian panini sandwich. Then we walked to the hat museum, or Museo del Sombrero, which specialized in showing how the Ecuadorian “Panama” hat was made and had many for sale. I bought one as my trip souvenir. Then we headed back to his apartment, having had enough of being tourists for the day.

I woke up well before the 6:15 sunrise this morning, Saturday. There was little traffic and I could hear the river outside the apartment. We ate breakfast in the apartment before walking to one of the traditional markets in town, the Feria Libre, a 10-minute walk along the river park and then a few blocks more. It’s a huge market, the biggest in the city, and vendors were selling everything from eggs to clothes to pets. Nathan likes to buy fresh produce there because they have the best prices. It was a very interesting place to wander through.

We brought Nathan’s produce back to the apartment, then left again, this time to take the Tranvía to the center of Cuenca. There, we climbed a tower of the Municipal Cathedral of Immaculate Conception for a view of the city and walked inside the cathedral. We ate lunch in a small restaurant adjacent to the central Parque Calderón, and then walked by many stands selling sweets and some selling flowers. The traditional sweets were being sold in stand after stand around the cathedral as part of Cuenca’s Corpus Christi celebration.

After walking around and window shopping the small shops, we took the Tranvía back to Nathan’s apartment. Some clouds looked foreboding and it often rains in the afternoon, but not on this day. After a few hours of lounging in the apartment, we walked to a Chinese restaurant across the street. There was a large noisy group of Americans in there already. We ordered one of Nathan’s favorites, a hearty vegetable and shrimp soup (or vegetable and chicken), ate and then left rather quickly because we couldn’t hear ourselves think due to the large group. But it was good soup.

Friday was our travel day from Mindo to Cuenca. After our final breakfast at Cabañas Armonía, we packed our things and walked to the bus terminal on the other side of town. The 11 a.m. bus left on time, but stopped many more times on its way back to Quito than there had been going to Mindo. At several of the stops, food vendors got on to sell their wares and then got off at the next stop. Nathan bought pan de yuca, or cassava bread, from one of them. The small puffy rolls were still hot and quite delicious. $1 bought 4 rolls, which we enjoyed thoroughly. Our plan was to get off the bus at La Mitad del Mundo, a monument at the equator, and look around there before catching a taxi to the Quito airport. But because the bus was slower than we anticipated, we got off the bus at Mitad and skipped the sightseeing, immediately catching a taxi. We arrived at the airport about 1:30, giving us time to check my bag, eat a quick lunch next to the gate, and board in time for our 3:15 flight on LATAM to Cuenca.

The flight to Cuenca is only 50 minutes long and the baggage claim is speedy and immediately next to the gate, so it was a fast and easy arrival. We exited the airport, walked across the street and caught a light rail train, the Tranvía, to the stop nearest Nathan’s apartment. It cost me $1 for the 15-minute ride and Nathan only 17 cents because of his Ecuadorian resident and 65+ age status. His apartment was a 10-minute walk from the stop, but it had me out of breath because of the 8,300 foot altitude. He lives on the 6th floor of an apartment building overlooking the Tomebamba River. His building has a 24-hour security guard, two elevators, and underground parking (although Nathan doesn’t have a car).

The traffic is busy and noisy, especially on this Friday night. After unloading my luggage, we walked to a nearby Supermaxi grocery store to pick up food and we each got ice cream cones too. Then we returned as it was getting dark, about 6 p.m. I was tired from the travel and high altitude, so after Nathan got a load of my laundry going in his combo washer/dryer machine, I went to bed early. I slept fairly well, despite the traffic noise that continued late into the night.

Today, Thursday, we decided to go on a popular cable-suspended tramway ride and hike a trail to waterfalls. First, we enjoyed the lodge’s breakfast of watermelon, scrambled eggs and a small “pancake” of ground cassava with cheese, served with pineapple juice and hot tea. Then we headed out under a gray sky to take a taxi to the tramway at 8:30 or so. We were their first customers and we had to wait while a worker was grinding or polishing a part of the metal tram car. It was a little unsettling to be the first riders after a “fix” that required someone wearing a welder’s helmet. The far-side tram operator rode with us as the tram car traversed high above the river canyon below. But everything went smoothly and reached the far side in about 3 minutes.

We started hiking downhill to the first waterfall. The temperature was in the sixties, very humid, but not raining. And we had the trail to ourselves. It was wide but fairly steep with steps. By the time we reached the third or fourth waterfall, I was quite sweaty and my glasses were continually steaming up. Nathan’s camera lens was steamed up too. So we decided to return to the top without seeing all 5 waterfalls. But we got some good exercise and saw some pretty falls. As we hiked back up, we met several hikers starting the journey down. At the tram station again, we watched the tram car go back and forth a few times while we rehydrated and cooled down. Then we took it back across the canyon. The operators had called our taxi driver already to come pick us up, so he arrived a few minutes later to take us back to town. The whole adventure took about 2 hours.

In Mindo, we stopped at the bus terminal to buy tickets for tomorrow’s ride back to Quito. Then we went to a little restaurant for lunch. Nathan had chicken and rice and I ordered a caprese salad of tomatoes and cheese with basalmic vinegar. After lunch we headed back to the cabaña and relaxed on the porch. It began to rain not long afterwards and didn’t stop all afternoon and evening. We didn’t feel like walking to a restaurant in the rain, so we ended up eating protein bars to stave off the hunger pangs ‘til morning.