Cuenca

Day 8 of the tour, we arrived in Cuenca - Ecuador´s third largest city with about 500k inhabitants. It has a distinct colonial feel to it, with dozens of very impressive Churches, built by the Spanish Conquistadors as they sought to (successfully) force Catholicism upon the Ecuadorians.

On the way to Cuenca we stopped off at a farm that has been converted into a tourist spot, where we tried traditionally prepared Cuy (guinea pig), which was slaughtered in front of us before being rubbed with a variety of spices and cooked slowly on top of a furnace.

Here, we also got our first glimpse of llamas and alpacas, although these were farm animals rather than wild; and we had a view of Ecuador´s largest mountain - not overly impressive to be honest, it was just a mountain with clouds round the top.

Had an early night that first night in Cuenca - needed to recover from the previous night´s festivities.

The second day in Cuenca, six of us left the hostel at 8am to take a minibus to Cajas National Park, 35km North of the city, where there were over 230 freshwater lakes, numerous Incan ruins and a huge variety of flora and fauna, including wild llamas.

The scenery there was absolutely stunning, especially after we had made a short climb up to 4200m (13800ft). Needless to say, breathing was very difficult at this altitude; we had to stop three times on the fifteen minute hike - our guide told us there is only 30% of the oxygen at that height compared to sea level.

After the 2 hour walk, a torrential downpour of rain started just as we were climbing back into the bus - perfect timing. We drove a few miles down the road to stop at a local restaurant for lunch, where we were rightly recommended the fresh trout, served with a simple salad, chips and rice (everything in Ecuador comes with potatoes and rice!). The fish was excellent, caught that morning in one of the lakes we had just hiked past.. [Rainbow trout were introduced to the lakes by European settlers, and proceeded to destroy all the other fish and amphibians in the water, but provided an easy food sauce for the Spanish.]

After returning to Cuenca, Kerry (22, Melbourne) and I walked down to see some Incan ruins at the far end of the city but we were fairly unimpressed by it - all you can see there is a simply wall with 16th and 17th century buildings on top.

In the evening, the whole group went to a Pizzeria/Heladeria in the centre for our last group dinner in Ecuador. The food was excellent - I had an enormous ham, chicken, and mushroom calzone for about US$6, but the ice cream for dessert was out of this world. I was fairly full, having finished off Julia´s pepperoni/salami/ham pizza and someone else´s vegetarian pizza, but I went for the Oreo Sundae - Three scoops of oreo icecream, with an oreo biscuit, a mound of whipped cream and hot chocolate sauce. Amazing.

Unfortunately though, I discovered that Angela, who is doing the exact same trip as me, Quito-Rio, is paying almost half what I am since she managed to get it for the 2008 price instead of 2009 - she cried on the phone to the tour operator. Still, I couldn´t be sour since she was the exception rather than me.

After returning to the hotel, we were introduced to a traditional Ecuadorian card game - couldn´t possibly explain how it works, but we were in teams of two and Kerry & I won.