It was just under a five hour journey from Guayaquil to Cuenca, and the buses did not compare to the their Peruvian counterparts. Oh well, we could suck it up for such a short trip. Legs a little cramped and bad music blaring followed by movies dubbed in Spanish, it was what we'd generally come to expect from this sort of transport. We finally arrived in the dark, grateful to be off the bus. They opened up the luggage compartment and WHOOSH- the most terrible smell emerged. Everyone immediately covered their mouths and noses with eyes tearing from the smell. They pulled out our bags and for the first time on the trip, I think I almost cried. The odor radiating off our packs was about as putrid as could be. I mean seriously!! Who travels with dead fish!!!!??

Incredibly distressed, we decided to go with one of the touts pushing the rooms at her hostel for the second time this trip. We just wanted to get our bags dealt with, and it seemed like an easy option. Yeah, it was a location that matched the way we smelled; in other words, a hole- filled with dead fish. We opened our packs to find that everything inside them smelled almost as bad as the outside. We sealed all of our clothes into plastic bags to be taken to laundry the next morning and trudged up to the roof, armed with some spray rubbing alcohol we'd purchased, and started the long stinky job of disinfecting. We left them overnight to air out, and my cousin Tera will be pleased to hear that by morning, only my bag still stank, but the lovely pack she had lent was now odor free. Happy birthday to me!

Having started the morning on a slightly stinky note was not going to ruin my day though. I was immediately taken for the best cup of coffee we'd had so far and presented with a long stem red rose; sometimes my buddy can be a real sweetie. We spent the day wandering around and getting acquainted with the city, called the parentals to let them know we were still alive, checked into a lovely hotel and headed out for the second spectacular meal in two days. I love eating well. I really must say that celebrating your birthday in a different country is really the way to go. Even the simplest things seem special.

The day after my birthday was when the string of bad weather finally started. We woke up early to take a little day trip we'd planned out to a waterfall in a town called Giron. The pictures looked beautiful and we really wanted to go and see it. But when we woke up the skies were grey and rainy. We ate breakfast and contemplated for awhile, decided not to go and then changed our minds and got on a bus. We'd made a plan damnit and we were going to stick to it! The bus ride took about an hour, including the half hour of cruising around town trying to fill the empty seats; man that habit starts to get REALLY annoying!!!

We arrived in Giron, grabbed some lunch, where I lamented the fact that my Spanish was not better and the words for "tuna" and "olive" are fairly similar, and flagged a taxi/pick-up truck to take us up to the park. It was drizzly and very cloudy (I say cloudy, but really it was foggy, it's just that we were in the mountains and the clouds sit very low; same, same). We were surprised to find no one at the front gate to take our money, but yay!! We started to hike up the mountain and while the visibility was low, the sound of water rushing was growing louder, so we must be going the right direction. We did ultimately find the waterfall and the only other three tourists in the park- the Argentines we'd met two days earlier; apparently we weren't the only stupid tourists. The waterfall was very pretty and we could almost see all of it, but that was enough and it was time to head back to Cuenca. We walked the few kilometers down the mountain in the rain, since there were no taxis to be found, and flagged a bus back.

Cuenca, while very charming, is apparently the American retirement capital of the world. We were ready for some younger folk, so it was time to leave. It just wouldn't seem right to go in the correct direction, so of course we decided to head further south; we'd set a precedent at this point. We caught yet another bus down to Vilcabamba and found the adventure we'd been seeking.