The caretaker at the Itapoa made us breakfast at dawn so we could catch an early bus to Cuenca. Since we were the only two at breakfast (well, with Lucas), I had a chance to chat with him and it turns out he is the one who rents mountain bikes and leads mountain bike tours here. I told him all about Bend and our mountain bike trails and he explained what he loves about the trails here through the dry and wet forests.
On the way out of town, we biked past the naval academy guys training in formation and they all waved at us. We chuckled as I'm pretty sure that in the U.S., that would have been a breach of military etiquette. Just one more thing to love about Ecuador. Since Puerto Lopez has a smaller bus station, we had planned a route to go to Guayaquil where we would transfer to a different bus to Cuenca. We were able to load our bikes with little stress and the guy didn't even charge us for our bikes! Which made up for the fact that Guayaquil's bus station was basically like a ginormous shopping mall and the bus guy there charged us $10 per bike... more than our bus tickets! Ugh, I couldn't wait to get out of there.
As we chugged up the mountains towards Cuenca, the views were stunning with fluffy cloud formations, sweeping views through valleys, and then we got into Cajas National Park and were a little bummed that we hadn't researched this part of the trip as well. If I had to do it again, I'd have asked to jump off in the national park and camp there!
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| Gazing wistfully at Cajas National Park through the bus window... at nearly 13,000 feet! |
We arrived in Cuenca by 4:30 pm-ish and dodged traffic a few miles to reach the AlterNative hostel, a clean well-appointed hostel situated in the historic center. The guy at the check in desk was a friendly local who bike commutes to work, checked out our rigs, and gave us a few recommendations for dinner. Ani and I decided to walk around and find somewhere awesome to eat because Ani got BINGO from our travel bingo card and won a free dinner. And so Galentines Day 2.0 commenced, with a few distractions in the form of craft breweries that seem to be everywhere in Cuenca.
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| Cool murals. |
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| The German craft brewery we found... with a 1.5 liter XXL option. |
We were a little tipsy when we walked into El Maiz, where couples and families were having intimate Valentine's Day dinners. We were offered a table on the back balcony with the other hooligans, some European backpacker types. El Maiz offers beautifully crafted elevated versions of classic Ecuadoran food. And so we feasted on superfluffy humitas, a hominy salad, freshly fried choclo, llapingachos, steamed potatoes with cheese, grilled pork loin, beef in a naranjilla sauce, and airy fried cheese empanadas.
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| Stolen from El Maiz's website because I didn't take any pictures. |
A few tips for cycle tourists:
- Everyone told us to go to Cuenca. And honestly, we weren't too impressed. Yes, the city is pretty with cool colonial architecture. There are lots of restaurants and trendy places. But it was too big and crowded for us, and somehow, it seemed to filled with more expats than locals.
- That said, if you end up there, it is a great place to stock up on all the stuff you miss from home. I'm told it has the best Thai restaurant in all of Ecuador and the beer and food really can't be beat.
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