Will and I left Cuenca with plans to return in roughly 30 years to live out retirement in this beautiful city. It is the 3rd largest city in Ecuador and has quite a large population of ex patriots as it is. But who can blame them (or future us) -the city sits at 8,200 ft (2,500m) so has a delightful climate with a gorgeous national park nearby, a variety of restaurants, beautiful historic buildings resulting in a UNESCO city center, and so many other wonderful things we learned in our 4 days there.
We got in after a long, not so great bus day from the coast. While we had just spent a lovely few days getting some sun and sand, we were ready (well I was, I think Will would have been content to stay in Canoa for another month), to get back to some city exploration and hiking. As I mentioned earlier, there are a fair amount of foreigners who reside in Cuenca (who appeared to be retired), so there are plenty of restaurants when we were looking for some comfort food – giant burgers, Mexican food, and Belgian sandwiches and frites – all of which we happily indulged in during our days here. There are also a ton of great 2/$5 cocktail deals around town and a Belgian style brewery that had a cherry sour (Will bought 4). All great things for days of long buses, hikes, or really anything else.
We wanted to spend the first day acquainting ourselves with the town. We walked to the city center, snapped some photos around town, and wandered into the New Cathedral and Old Cathedral (Iglesia de Sagrario). The Old Cathedral was built in the 1500’s and is no longer used as such (hence the New Cathedral), but it has been turned into an entertaining little museum which showcases some beautiful art from the original construction, paintings, old timey wardrobes, Spanish correspondences and ledgers from colonial days, and oddly, butterfly chairs. We were also really excited to visit Museo Pumapungo, an anthropology museum that happened to be right across the street from our hostel. It has a few sections – art gallery, history of Ecuadorian money, and anthropological history of the region including shrunken heads. Sadly for us, the whole anthropology section (which made up about 80% of the museum) was closed while we visited, so we didn’t get to see the shrunken heads – some of the few on display in the world. Our visit to the museum was roughly 20 minutes during which we looked at some old money and were quite thankful admission was free.
The next morning at breakfast trying to decide how we wanted to proceed, we learned about the zoo (though more animal refuge), Amaru Zoológico Bioparque. A $5USD cab ride from the city center and a $6USD entrance fee, and we were in for 3 hours of wonder and fun. The biopark is situated on the side of a mountain overlooking Cuenca. While getting beautiful vistas of the city, we walked around learning about all kinds of creatures from the Andes and surrounding areas. This is more of an animal refuge than a zoo, so while the animals are in enclosures, it often takes you awhile to spot what you seek – one of Will’s special talents – as there is ample room for the animal to roam. Walking through we quickly learned that the animals present were primarily rescued – from a rare condor whose species is being hunted to extinction to a Galápagos tortoise whose shell was distorted as if someone carelessly felled a tree on top of it. Throughout the park there are also exhibits educating you on the dangers of deforestation, poaching, hunting, exotic pets, and pollution. We had so much fun finding these gorgeous creatures and learning about animals we had never seen or heard of. A few of our personal favorites included the tapir, ocelot, Spectacled (Andean) bear and Galápagos tortoises.
Riding our high from Amaru, we wanted to keep exploring so the next day we visited El Cajas National Park. This has been one of my personal highlights of our whole trip thus far. This is an excursion that costs next to nothing (my favorite) and was a landscape like I have never seen – a high grassland (páramo). The bus ride from Cuenca takes about an hour and is $2USD/person. They drop you right at the entrance where you pop in, choose a route (they have many that range from 2 hours to 8 hours), provide your passport information and head off. There is no entrance fee. We took our time hiking around as this is another high altitude hike, from 12,500ft-13,00ft (3800m-3955m) and we wanted to make sure we were enjoying ourselves the whole time without any of that pesky high altitude sickness- also because every 5 steps one of us had to stop to take another picture. We chose Route 1, a 3-4hour hike around a few lakes and through some ridges that can either take you out to a highway or loop back to the starting point. After setting out from the entrance, we saw no people on our trek other than a tent on the other side of one of the lakes. This is by far the most amazing hike I have ever been on, and if you find yourself in the region, I could not recommend it enough.
After our few days it was time to continue moving forward so we bought a night bus ticket to Peru for the next night. This left us one more day to explore the town. We came across a large market selling all ranges of fruits and meats, bought some nice art for our future home, and drank some coffee and a beer or 2. A pretty perfect Ecuador send off.
If you couldn’t tell for my incessant gushing – we are serious about retiring here. There was the museum we never finished seeing, restaurants we never got to eat at, hot springs we didn’t get to soak in, and hikes we missed. So much to return for!
