Day 19 - Cuenca

After breakfast, which was quite slow because it seems you have to eat your fruit before you are offered the hot dishes menu, we had a late start to our day looking round Cuenca.  We started high up above the city at a viewpoint, where a local singer was standing on a parapet in high heeled gold shoes and Andean traditional dress.  Fortunately she didn’t fall off.

Then we went to the Panama hat workshop, which was fascinating with demonstrations of weaving, blocking and putting on the hat band.  And of course we had to have our photos taken with hats next to every star imaginable.

In central Cuenca we left the car and looked at the main square, churches, the craft centre before shopping for drinks and in Pete’s case a massive ice cream.


Our second outing was to look round the shops in the neighbouring streets.  There are some truly crazy combinations of goods such as washing machines and motorbikes in the same shop.  Another shop sold sports goods and bathroom fittings!

In the evening we set off for our compensatory meal.  This was because our train trip had to be changed.  Diego wasn’t taking us, so needless to say chaos ensued, the reception of our hotel couldn’t understand why we needed a taxi for 5 blocks so at 7pm nothing came.  After 10 minutes, we discovered nothing was coming and decided to walk.  The restaurant had our booking so we were shown to a table and the head chef, who spoke good English, sorted Glynis’ dietary issues.  The meal began with bread and 9 little pots of increasingly hot accompaniments.  Next came shrimp (well, prawn, really) soup and a lesson from the waiter on which of the little pots went with it.  Then dishes of rice, corn, potatoes, the best chips ever and quinoa and corn salads arrived followed by huge sizzling prawns all washed down with white wine.  Then a chicken curry, but unlike anything we had tasted before and last of the savoury courses, the most beautiful piece of steak.  Our special pudding was a plate covered in edible drawings of flowers with assorted sorbets.  When we thought it was all over, the waiter brought sugar cane liqueur and another one which tasted of Tia Maria.  A fabulous meal.  Then came the fun bit; they didn't seem up to speed on who was paying, so after about 10 minutes, Pete gave them Diego's number.  Several calls and another 10 minutes with us feeling a bit like naughty children waiting to see the head, they said it was all OK and we could go.  We decided to walk back to the hotel.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 23 - Fernandina and Isabela islands

Image
The boat moved overnight, which was a 13 hour trip.  The sea was rather rough, so despite seasick pills, Glynis didn’t have the best night and didn’t want a great deal of breakfast.  The first activity of the day was a panga (RIB) ride along at Mangle Point on Ferdinanda Island.  What we saw was simply amazing . . . The late morning activity was snorkelling which Glynis decided against, after her bad night, so we sat on the sun deck and watched for the pangas coming back. After lunch we moved to Punta Moreno on Isabella island and after another panga ride along the coast, which showed just how good the RIB drivers are, as it was pretty rough, we landed on this relatively new section of island for a walk. This was all about lava flows, it was desolate with only a few cacti.  Further in were fresh water ponds with one solitary flamingo.   On our way back we had a very lucky encounter with a fishing boat cleaning the fish.  They were surrounde...
Read more

Day 3 - Around Arequipa

Image
After a good sleep, a nosebleed was a bad start to the day for Glynis, but it settled down and we made it to breakfast, which was interesting.  Coca tea was an option and so was fried pork, an interesting change from bacon, but we kept it light and just had fruit and a small amount of the interesting cooked options. Our guide for this area, Grace, arrived promptly at 9am and we set off in a minibus just the 2 of us to two viewpoints outside the city.  The first looked across the valley of the Chili River to the Volcanoes Misti and Chachani and out to the right we could see Pichu Pichu.  The second looked out from a church through arches with text celebrating Arequipa.  We then headed to an Alpaca 'factory' where we saw the animals and learned to distinguish alpacas from llamas and vicunas. Once back in the city centre, we saw a mini festival of Puno people before we visited the Museo Sanctuaries Andinos dedicated to the frozen sacrifice of a young gir...
Read more

Peru and Equador

"If we are going all that way we should go for at least a month" said Pete early in 2017, but has denied it ever since.  A month in October and November is it seems the most inconvenient time of year! Back in February we spent quite a lot of time deciding what we wanted to see in Peru and Ecuador and approached 3 companies for itineraries and quotes.  Only one really listened both to the time of year we'd decided on and put in all the things we wanted to see, so we chose Bespoke Latin America.  It would be expensive but included all our must sees and many of our would like to sees. After  a year of hiccups and surprises, it was October and we were finally ready to go. Or so we thought; read our blog to hear what we managed to miss or mess up!
Read more