Cuenca and Cajas

After leaving the Galapagos, I made a fairly easy move down to the southern part of the highlands to Cuenca.  Cuenca is a small city (still at an altitude) but has a great feel.  It is clearly a product of the Spanish settlers and you can see that through all the colonial architecture.  It is a comfortable place to spend a few nights!  I arrived on a Sunday.  And well everything was closed.  I didn't arrive until about six, but finding a restaurant to eat and then a "tienda" to buy some water was a bit of a challenge.  I was roaming the streets until about 10:00.  Monday's plan had been to wander the city and that is just what I did!

The city (or the interesting, touristy part) is small enough to be navigated by foot and I was able to see most of the sights I was interested in without too much trouble.  The main museum is a bit of a walk but it is well worth it (although a few more signs is English would have been great).  My favorite part of it was that behind the museum are the remnants of some Inca ruins which I could wander through.  They led me to a path to some botanical gardens that also had a mini bird-zoo.  It was good to spend the afternoon that way.  I also got to visit some of the other sights...mainly churches.  Cuenca has something like 52 churches in the old historic part of town.  (And they are all Catholic).

My main reason for coming to Cuenca though was to explore a bit of Cajas National Park.  I had wanted to do some hiking in the park and Cuenca is a perfect stopover for that.  Today, my hike was mostly over 4000m and it was spectacular.  Cajas is famous for having tons of water; it does.  There are thousands of lakes and ponds and water falls.  It was truly amazing to be this high in the mountains checking out the park and enjoying the scenery.  The guide was good, pointing out a bunch of different plants, etc.  The coolest part of the trip was being inside the "papertree forest".  These are trees who take a long time to grow and shed off layers of wood that are as thin as paper.  The forest we were in was about 500-600 years old and the trees are very cool.  It reminded me of Dagoba (the place where Luke Skywalker was trained by Yoda).  Pretty intense and pretty awesome.

I was once again reminded of why hiking is fun, although also reminded to take it slow!  Rushing at altitude does no one any good!  Once again though, the weather was not in my favor as we were hiking a bit through intermittant rains.  When the clouds did dissapate a bit, you were able to see the magic of the Andes.  Tomorrow, I think I am off to Banos.  Or Riobamba.  I can't decide just yet.  They are both about six hours by bus.