Tours in Cuenca

By Marc

Thursday turned out to be a tourist day!   We started the day off at 9am with a city bus tour of Cuenca.  The local Rotarians hired a professional tour guide and we did a 4 hour tour.

The tour started with a hat factory tour.  Did you know that the original “panama style hat” is actually from Ecuador?  It is actually a very facinating bit of history.  You can get the gist of it here.

The hats are all hand woven and the finer the weave, the more expensive the hat.  Prices start at $15 (for a hat that takes 2 days for 1 person to weave) and go up to $900 (for a hat that would take up to a year to weave).

At one point in the process, they have to let the hats dry outside in the sun.  We joked that it looked like a hat farm!

We then visited a church and a museum.  The architecture is really quite facinating with a really ecclectic mix of French, Spanish and Aribian.  All mixed up, they call it “Cuenca Style”.

At the museum, Chris found a table and chairs that must have been built by one of her long lost Amazonian relatives.

She was a little upset that there was a sign saying that she was not aloud to sit on it.

It would take too long to describe the rest of the tour, so I will just share a few images from the day.

We start with a local women carrying her baby on her back.

One of the oldest churches in Cuenca.  And yes, for those wondering, I went into a church and did not burst into flames.  I am sure many of you just lost a bet

An old government building.

Local women selling fruit on the sidewalk.

After the tour it was lunch, a bit of free time and then the drive back to Guayaquil.

I didn’t take any pics on the drive as I wanted to relax a bit.  If we could havel stopped, I would have taken a picture that could only be described as heavenly.  We are decending down the mountain and all of a sudden you can see the sun shining through some clouds, reflecting on fog that was rising from the valey beneath.  It looked like we were floating in between two levels of clouds.  Next to looking at Chris, I don’t think I have ever seen anything so beautiful in my life.   Due to the low light, I knew that I could never take a picture that would do the scene justice, so I decided to just sit back and reflec on the beauty around me.

This country has beautiful cities, flowers and mountains.  But their most beautiful resource is their people.   Everyone has treated us with the utmost kindness, gratitude and hospitality.  I would recomend a visit to Ecuador to anyone and I also hope to come back some day for a longer visit.

After basking in the warm glow of the setting sun, it came to me that we would eventually have to drive down into the fog below that for now was just a blanket of solace.  All I can say is that the drivers here are very skilled and would put any driver in North America to shame!

We arrived back at our hotel, safe and sound around 8pm.   We had a message waiting from our new friends Gonzolo and Denisse saying they would pick us up at 10:30 to go dancing.    But alas my friends, that is another story that will be posted later!

Thanks to everyone who is following our adventures!  We really appreciate to all the comments you have posted, please keep them comming!

PS:  A parting photo for those who read through all of this!  Cuenca is located in a valley.  They took us up on one end of town for a spectacular view of the city.