Day Seventeen - Bus to Cuenca

We were up super early today to catch a taxi to the bus station. We got on the bus at 9.50 to travel to Cuenca.

It was a really pretty journey, although unfortunately as we drove higher we hit high clouds in the mountains which obstructed our views. It was still pretty cool as the valley was all filled with cloud lakes.

We arrived in Cuenca around 2pm and jumped in a taxi to our hostel, La Cigale. The bar area was super busy but the hostel itself was pretty quiet. We were offered a room above the bar area or a quieter room which hadn't quite been made up for us yet, so we waited outside on the bench somewhat awkwardly as the cleaner made our beds for us! We keep bagging ourselves double rooms with a double bed and a single bed which is great to unpack all our stuff on (or to banish Brendan too when we've had a disagreement!!!)

We headed out for a wander around Cuenca, for Ecuador's third largest city, it seems really small, and the main square (despite walking for 10 minutes the wrong way!) was only about a 3 minute walk from our hostel!

We went to a place called Raymipampa for a late lunch which was really nice. I had chicken and mushroom pancakes and Brendan had a Mac n cheese. We had a bit of a wander around the main square with all the palm trees and the impressive statue in the middle, and then slowly headed back to the hostel. What were the chances that we arrived back just in time for happy hour (4-8pm!!!) The gin and tonics were very strong and only $2, which was a dangerous combination!

2 hours, 3 gins and mojitos, and $12 later, we somewhat stumbled back to our room and watched an episode of Sherlock and munched our way through a whole bag of cheesy Doritos! Not soon after we decided to skip dinner and fell asleep!