Cuenca Travel Blogs | Travelogues | Travel Journals

My return to Ecuador, this time i went alone, and for 3month, to learn spanish. now it is like my second home, and i know i will return! (text is in swiss-german...sorry guys..but i don't wanna translate...but there are also a lot of pictures)

After our disappointing day in Alausi, the Germans and I continued on to Cuenca together with hopes of green pastures.  The light drizzle could not the hide the beauty of this Spanish feeling colonial town as we walked the streets in the morning.  The Inca ruins in town were a bit of a joke, the whole area was only about 20 meters by 20 meters and the highlight was nothing more and a part of a stone wall. The morning drizzle turned into an afternoon downpour ...

My daypack has been stolen. It contained 300 quids worth of gear and it´s all gone. My Ipod, fleece, sunglasses, swiss army knife, first aid kit,  even my Lonely Planet Guidebook, the lot. Four of us were sat in a cafe having lunch, the bag was on my right but slightly behind me. I even thought about dragging it forward and wrapping a strap around my leg but decided that it wasn´t necessary. But clearly it was - someone who had been eating in the cafe obviously just pulled th...

One of the most amazing little countries. Beautiful place and people. The Amazon and the Andes...what more could you ask for. Stayed in the Amazon. Also took a train from Quito to Cuenca through the Avenue of the Volcanoes.

So, hier nun also ein bisschen etwas von dem, was wir in 5 Wochen in Ecuador, Peru und nochmal Ecuador mit der Kamera eingefangen haben! Eindruecke einer nicht immer leichten aber dafuer abenteuerreichen und vorallem schoenen Reise :)

Cuenca - written up as the 3rd largest and most attractive of Ecuador´s cities.  Unfortunately, it far from lived up to expectations and sadly left a bitter taste at the end of a superb 3 weeks in Ecuador. The journey from Baños had been yet again been filled with great views on a lovely clear day starting with the erupting Volcan Tungurahua near Baños, passing Volcan Chimborazo (providing us with the views we wanted on the day we climbed it), through Alausi and passed where the...

Cuenca seemed to be at the heart of the tourist trail through Ecuador. I suppose that the UNESCO world heritage site designation, agreeable climate, and charming amalgamation of quaint colonial character and upscale modernism are partly to blame. With around 500,000 people Cuenca is the third largest city in Ecuador, behind Guayaquil and Quito respectively. The city is inundated with churches and museums and appears to have a lot to offer culturally. It is also located about an hour away...

So if you're told to meet at a hotel at 8:20 a.m. and you stand in it's doorway between 8:10 and 8:35 you'd expect to be found wouldn't you ?  Sadly it was not the case for me so I'm not quite sure what went wrong here. The friendly staff at the Inca Real hotel jumped on the phone to my tour company to see if they could figure out what went wrong, however the guide was already out in the National park by that point and had apparently checked the hotel so who knows ??? To their credit Te...

Het was een mooie dag in Alausi, zo ´s ochtends tot een uur of tien. Wij lekker in de zon ontbeten en vroeg naar het station om kaartjes te kopen voor de treinrit naar Devils nose. Helaas.. er was (nog steeds) een piepklein onderdeeltje kapot. *Advertorial* Dat doet de NS toch beter!  *einde advertorial* Toen hebben we snel de bus naar Cuenca gepakt, die was er een half uur eerder dan gepland. *Advertorial* Cuenca buslines staan klaar terwijl u wacht! *einde advertorial* Het werd w...

  So after leaving the Galapogas it was on to Cuenca. We flew into Guayaquil we caught a bus to Cuenca about 5 hours. We had booked a hostal but we arrived a bit late and they had let out the room to a very amouros couple so we dumped our bags and headed for a pub. Finally found one and had a great chat with a local guy who knew less english than we knew spanish. Very interesting. We headed back to the room and lets say we didn´t get a good nights sleep. We got up the next day with our...

Roundtrip to Ecuador!

5h-busfahrt weiter noerdlich erreichen wir cuenca. das kleine staedtchen gehoert dank seinen vielen kolonialbauten zum unesco weltkulturerbe. zudem ist cuenca beruehmt fuer seine panama-strohhuete. diese werden nicht etwa wie der name faelschlicherweise vermuten laesst in panama, sondern traditionell in ecuador hergestellt. denn nur hier waechst die richtige schilfart in der richtigen qualitaet. entsprechend werden die huete hier auch nicht panama hat, sondern nach der beruehmtesten hutherste...

Join me catchin trains, planes and automobiles on my year long travels to China, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Boliva and Ecuador. 06/07...08.

We swiftly avoided Guayaquil on Wednesday afternoon and got the first bus out of there to Cuenca where we took a chance on getting a couple of extra nights in the hostel we had booked for the Easter weekend. Cuenca is a lovely city, much smaller than Quito and more charming. It has been pretty busy here over the past few days with locals roaming around, as it has been a holiday weekend, but today being Easter Sunday a lot of things are closed.We have been here for 4 days, with 1 day at an Inc...

Arriving in Cuenca's historic centre, it wasnt the Ecuador we knew. The colonial style buildings with little balconies were all class, there were trendy little cafes everywhere, lots of clothing and shoe stores, some organisation in the road rules, a beautiful river running through the middle....it was definitely a place that had its act together. A student town with a number of Universities, it had a vibe that was different to what we had so far experienced in Ecuador. Not better o...