After a lovely nights sleep at La Posada del Angel I dragged myself out of bed and had a delicious breakfast in the hostel cafe - eggs and toast yum.
We then headed out to the central plaza in the middle of Cuenca to jump on the red double decker bus to explore the city like real tourists! I had to sit next to this Spanish woman who cackled and screamed the entire trip and kept slapping my leg and talking to me in Spanish even though I told her I didn't understand. In the end every time she did it I just said "si". We sat on the top deck, and experienced more of south America's laxity towards safety. The power lines above our heads were so low at times we all had to duck down to avoid being clothes lined or electrocuted!
We saw some lovely old churches (right up there with the ones in Paris and Italy, but I reckon once you've seen a few they all start looking the same!) and some old Inca ruins amongst other things. We drove up this big hill that over looked the whole city of Cuenca, and got some great photos. It really is a nice city.
We hopped off the bus to visit the Mall del Rio - a big shopping centre that made me feel like I was back in some kind of civilisation, something I haven't had for 2 weeks. I bought some sunnies and after several minutes of negotiation in broken Spanish, I managed to buy a burger from KFC. The cheese was weird as, it was grated plastic cheese! Still tasted pretty mean though. Time to get back on the bus and finish our tour, well worth the $5 we paid.
We milled about at the hostel for a couple of hours and then went out in search of a feed, and found one for $1.90. It included half a big plate of meat stew (I didn't even want to ask what type it was), rice, fried banana and avocado. It was tasty and so cheap! Then back to the hostel for an early night, another early start tomorrow as we're crossing the border to Peru wooooo! It's about a 7 hour bus ride so I'm charging the iPod, I'll be cranking a solid few hours of the Black Keys and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs I reckon!