Day 20 - Cuenca to Guayaquil

After another slow breakfast service, we left Cuenca and headed north west towards the coast.  Above Cuenca in the Western Andes is the Cajas National Park.  We stopped at just short of 4000m at the park centre where we met our guide.  He took us for a walk round some of the glacial lagoons, explaining the land forms and plants as we went.  The scenery could have been Scotland, but the vegetation of the Paramo is so different.  It really is a magical place, so we really enjoyed the walk.  The weather was being kind and the views were superb.


We had a snack lunch of chicken empanadas and our last cup of coca tea (now that we were leaving the highlands).  We need to give the coca tea away before we fly home! Our very last high place was at 4200m when we crossed the pass. We stopped just a little later to look down into the valley which was covered in cloud.  The vegetation was changing fast from paramo to cloud forest, then to tropical.  As we came down the hill, we drove into the cloud, which was quite disconcerting.  Near the bottom, we stopped for Diego to buy bananas and plantain for his sister, then on down into the drab misty plain and the past the slums and banana plantations on either side until we crossed one of the harbour bridges in Guayaquil.

Our hotel proved very hard to find as it is in a distant suburb; getting into the gated community proved difficult.  It is very odd as it has only a few rooms and is in a residential area.  None of the staff speak English, so although 2 nights will be fine here, we hope they can find us an alternative for when we get back from the Galapagos.  The only dinner we could find was at the local shopping plaza’s food court.  Fast food but nice Chinese prawns and the Ecuadorian version of Scampi and chips with salad!  Then back to the hotel to work out how best to use the air conditioning as it is very hot and humid here.


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