Cuenca

I spent last weekend (Sunday through Tuesday) in Cuenca with 3 of my friends! It's the third largest city in Ecuador and it's all the way in the southern part of the country. It is a 12 hours bus ride each way but luckily we found very cheap tickets and its only a 45 minute flight! We arrived Sunday late morning. The city was pretty dead since it was Sunday so we went to the hostel that we had found in my friends guide book to check in. We got to the hostel and it was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. It was surrounded by an enormous stone wall with about 15 metal locks and all the windows had steel bars in them. So we immediately turned the other way and found a much nicer, more friendly hostel. After that we went to lunch in a really cool restaurant/cafe/ice cream shop in a beautiful little courtyard. After lunch we spent the afternoon walking around the city.

                           The architecture in the City is beautiful! There were tons of churches and the streets were all cobblestone. There was a big town square with a huge fountain and churches and old buildings on all sides of it. 

The streets were all narrow with cobblestones and all the buildings had adorable balconies coming off of them. 

 During our walk around the city we found a really cool wildlife museum that we stopped in to find frogs and snakes and alligators and other cool animals from all around Ecuador. There was also a room with enormous spiders but I stayed clear of that room. After the museum we found a huge river that runs through the town with some of the most beautiful houses along the river.

 We eventually made our way to a viewing point on the side of one of the mountains that we had been advised to go to. From the viewing point, you could see the entire city of Cuenca! It was beautiful! From above, it looked kind of similar to Quito - a city in the mountains. But from below, it was very different. The city is much calmer than Quito and has way fewer people. In addition, the architecture is very different. 

 The next morning, we woke up early and took a bus two hours to a town called Ingapirca which has the only Incan ruins in Ecuador. It was amazing! We got a tour of the ruins and our guide told us a bunch of cool things. For example, Ingapirca is known as the Machu Pichu of Ecuador. In addition, the Incans wanted to make it the seize of Cuzaco (and had enough materials) but they were interrupted in 1530 when they were conquered by the Spanish. 

The town was in the mountains and had a beautiful view of southern Ecuador.

 As part of our tour, our guide introduced us to some very friendly llamas and let us hug them and take pictures with them.

That night, two of my friends were tired so went back to the hostel but my friend Val and I went to outdoor natural thermal hot springs to relax and meet up with some friends she had met in Quito but who lived in Cuenca.

The next morning, we woke up early again and went to a small town about 45 minutes away from Cuenca that is famous for its silver and gold jewelry. The town square has about 35 jewelry shops all selling beautiful jewelry for half the price as anywhere else in Ecuador. My friends and I did lots of shopping!

That afternoon, we went to el Museo Banco Central (a museum) which was really cool. It had different rooms with scenes from life in all different parts of Ecuador. Instead of having pictures of life, they actually recreated it with sculptures and figures.