Day 15: Cuenca To Angelita's (22.4 Miles)

Breakfast marks the difference between the guesthouses that are family-owned versus more European-style hostels.  Although the AlterNative hostel has all the amenities of a great hostel, the breakfast was basically coffee, wonder bread DIY toast with margarine and jam, and a banana... a far cry from our lovingly-made eggs and fresh juice.  But, it was free and who were we to complain?  And then, sometimes hostel life shines through.  Someone had left an egg in the "leave your extra food" area and another gal was struggling to finish a huge avocado and asked if we wanted it.  And like that, we had ourselves a lovely egg sandwich for breakfast.  My karmic gift back to the commune was a nearly full bag of lentils that we hated cooking in camp because they take too long!

On our way out of town, we went to the only post office in all of Cuenca that sells stamps... mind you, Cuenca is the third largest city in Ecuador!  Ecuador does not have a culture of mail, and oddly, there seem to be mailboxes all over, including in smaller tourist towns like Puerto Lopez, but who knows when it is actually picked up and you cannot buy stamps anywhere except in the largest cities.  Since it cost $3 to send postcards to the U.S., we decided to just send a few back to our favorite people and then mail or hand deliver the rest from the U.S.  To make it a little more fun, we bought some $0.10 stamps to put on those.

Leaving the Cuenca valley behind.

School break in one of the small towns we passed through.

We were winding through tiny dirt roads when I saw that Ani had stopped and was actually chatting with a local man.  Normally, she goes through her small vocabulary and then tells folks that her friend who speaks Spanish is right behind.  Turns out this man, whose name we forgot to ask, had lived in Chicago from the age of 16 through 37 and came back to Ecuador about a year ago because his parents wanted to retire in their hometown.  He also wanted to come back and try to get back to the U.S. legally, but to his dismay, Trump was elected so he felt unsure about those prospects.  He was so happy to practice his English since he hadn't had the opportunity to use it since he had been back.

Coffee break with ominous clouds in a tiny town called Deleg.

The skies did not cooperate and so it sprinkled and rained on us off and on.  Luckily it was pretty warm while we were riding and my new poncho worked fine.  As we climbed out of the Cuenca valley, we started to see more traditional clothes and a lot of curious friendly stares as we rode by.  Some folks even tried to chase us down to ask us where we were going and what were we doing?  In retrospect, I wish we had stopped more but the rain was more bearable when we were moving, so that's what we kept doing.

Sweet repurposed bicycles.

Cute little house with one of the nice dogs.

Lots of hike-a-bike on amazing dirt roads... right after the town of shitty dogs (well, except for the cute puddle of puppies).

We also saw tons of baby lambs and wondered why we couldn't find the elusive seco de cordero anywhere!  As the day continued on, we realized it was getting late and we were nearing the PanAmerican highway and that we would probably want to stop before we got there.  There was a sprinkling of houses along the dirt road before the highway, so I stopped and asked an indigenous grandmother and her granddaughter if there was somewhere to spend the night.  "It's not that we don't want to help you, but we cannot protect you," she explained as she directed us to a ranch down the PanAmerican where she felt we could ask this favor.  Her directions were confusing at best at how to arrive a this ranch.  Just up the road at the intersection with the PanAmerican, there was a cafeteria, so I asked again there.  Bingo!  Angelita, the owner of the cafeteria, offered the space behind the cafeteria or in her yard, which was just across the street.  Done and done.

Moreno, the resident dog at Angelita's who bravely chases semi-trucks down the PanAmerican.

We decided to have the merienda at Angelita's cafeteria before setting up camp, which included a jugo de tomate de arbol, potato/choclo/rice soup, stewed chicken, rice, plantains, and french fries.  When it was finally time to set up camp, Angelita was fascinated by our gear.  She checked out our tent, asked about our sleeping bags, and then after a minute, asked if we wouldn't feel more comfortable sleeping inside the gated enclosure of the cafeteria.  That suited us just fine because we would not be visible at all from the road and we were amused by sharing the space with her chickens.  She promised that she would open up the door early for us, and asked if we needed to use the restroom before she locked us into our compound.

Our cozy home for the night.

View through our gated paradise.

A few tips for cycle tourists:

• This part of the trip we literally had nothing but Maps.ME and an idea of working our way back towards Quito on small roads and staying off the PanAmerican as much as possible.  We had not planned anything and were just taking it one day at a time.  

• The dogs in this section were TERRIBLE.  I literally had to kick a dog in the face when all my other tactics failed (slowing down, stopping, riding towards the dog, throwing rocks at the dog).