¡Hola!

Our last stop off in Ecuador was the lovely town of Cuenca.The provincial capital of the south, Cuenca is a fairly grand sort of a place and had several stunning churches sporting lots of marble and colourful domes, a pleasant central plaza and lots of decent looking restaurants, bars and night clubs too.Had we not ended up spending quite so much time in Baños we might have stayed longer than just one night in Cuenca, but in the end we had a real laugh in the short time we had there.We'd turned up there quite late in the day, having spent most of it on the bus, so we headed straight out for dinner, lazily picking a restaurant from the Lonely Planet.We arrived to find Andrew and Beatrice (one of the couples we had trekking with on the Quilotoa loop) sitting at a table about to pay their bill.This was beginning to get a bit uncanny since we had bumped into them in the supermarket in Baños a few days earlier too, but then that's often how it is when you travel.Anyway, they stayed for a few drinks and we treated ourselves to some decent reds off the wine list.In the morning we had a nice wander around town, did the obligatory bump into Andrew and Beatrice at the museum, then headed off to catch a bus to Loja and later a night bus all the way to Puira in Peru.

We left with lots of nice memories from Ecuador: even discounting the Galapgaos, it was such a beautiful country to travel around, and we met some lovely people along the way too.

R&M

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