Day 56 - Guayaquil to Cuenca, Ecuador (13 May 2012)

Day 56 - Guayaquil to Cuenca, Ecuador (13 May 2012)

First things first, Happy Mothers Day Mum!!! I know it is not Mothers Day anymore in NZ but it is still here.
We wake up this morning and head down for breakfast and find out the cafe is closed.  Gutted.  Oh well, we will get some breakfast at the bus station.  We get a taxi to the bus station.  When we get there we find it difficult to find the right bus company to take us to Montaneta, which is on the coast of Ecuador.  We finally find the right company and the line is huge.  We are also hungry.  I leave Ann to line up and organise our bus tickets while I go to the supermarket to get us some breakfast.  I buy a couple of croissants, 3 bananas, and some snacks and water for the bus trip.  This supermarket is similar to the supermarkets in Peru, it is a supermarket mixed with a store like The Warehouse.  I watch the football which is on one of the tv's in the store for a couple of minutes, it is the last round of the English Premier League and it was a spectacular finish to the season with Manchester City winning the title, very dramatic.  When I get back to the bus terminal (the bus terminal is part of the shopping centre, which has the supermarket), I find Ann sitting on her bag with a look of frustration on her face.  She had been lining up and when she got to the front and asked for two tickets to Montineta, she kept getting told to go to the next window booth, and having to line up again.  She had given up.  We tell each other that it is a sign that we are not meant to go to Montineta, so we will head inland to Cuenca, which was going to be our next stop after Montineta.  We also tell ourselves that the day we save can be additional day at the top of Columbia on the Caribean in a couple of weeks.  We are now very happy with our decision.  We book our ticket to Cuenca and realise the bus that we had booked was leaving in five minutes and we had no idea where to board the bus.  After a bit of running around we realise we have to go up two levels to the departure gate.  When we get here we jump on the bus and it is very hot! Two minutes later we are off.  After about an hour we start an ascent up a mountain, we continue climbing up for about an hour, we must be at a very high level of altitude here.  We then descend a wee bit into Cuenca.  Cuenca is about 2,500 metres above sea level and is Ecuadors third largest city with about 450,000 people living here.  It is also surprisingly cold (well compared to what we have encountered).  It is about 15 degrees here when we arrive.  We find our hostal (Hostal El Capitolo).  We just turn up and hope there is space which there is.  We have been doing this quite a bit as it is low season and there usually is a room available.  When we get settled we have a look around the city.  It is nice but very quiet, especially in comparison to Guayaquil.  Maybe this is because it is a Sunday, we will find out tomorrow.  We then head to the supermarket and get some dinner, snacks and water and head back to the hostal for the night.