Cuenca

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 Inca ruin site. We have seen lots of lovely churches and today went to mass in the New Cathedral on the main square which was lovely. It was packed full of people and as we were leaving at 10.45am the next load of people were arriving for the next sitting!

On Easter Saturday we wandered over to a park on the South East of the City Centre to watch some go cart racing and donkey races, but we were not overly impressed. We expected lots of excitement and enthusiasm from the locals, but none of them seemed all that interested in what was going on! There were lots of people there, but not really getting into the spirit of it. So we left.

Last night we had dinner in a bar and then stayed to listen to a salsa band, who were excellent. We watched lots of people dancing, but did not partake outselves, even though I know that Nicola was dying to!

Tomorrow we are leaving here. I think our landlady will be sad to see us go - she keeps asking us to promote her hostal - Casa Naranja, and Andrei has been roped into developing a website for her on our return to England. So Dave and Libby we may be able to wangle you some free nights there in return!