Day 33 Saturday, April 6th Guayaquil, Ecuador to Cuenca, Ecuador.

Usual tedious border crossing (Peru/Ecuador) with a slow-moving one hour line toward bored officials who stamp/stamp/stamp documents that no-one will ever read while equally bored men with guns look on. Arrived in Guayaquil bus station at 5.45am (big, efficient place) and immediately jumped onto a 6.00am departure bus to Cuenca. Just had time to use the bathroom and grab and coffee and a muffin.

This regional bus was almost empty at first but stopped every mile or so to let on locals until the bus was absolutely overloaded with people squashed into standing positions around our seats. One young lady was on the verge of throwing up all over us for a good part of the journey. The bus was full of the rich aroma of all the overdressed woman and men from the farms and we could smell goats, chickens and the vegetables that they grow. Really interesting to people watch- and they watch us. We are usually the only tourists (time of year) and no-one speaks English. The Ecuadorian countryside is very pleasant to look at and seems fertile. We chat to the locals as best we can with our few words of Spanish. We tell them our names and ask them their names. We tell them we are English but live in California. We tell them we have three daughters-we get by and we all have a lot of fun. They are very happy to help us learn Spanish and some of them want to learn English. There is a lot of laughter (at us). It’s tough when the conversation needs to get serious and so we are trying hard to improve our meagre Spanish.

We get to Cuenca at 1.00pm after a seven hour journey from Guayaquil (so with Mancora to Guayaquil that was 16 hours on buses).

We picked up an hotel leaflet at the Cuenca bust station and take a cab to Rio Piedra. They give us immediate access to the room which is on the 5^th floor (no elevator). US$52/night. The American Dollar is the official currency of  Ecuador.

We have settled into a pretty good way of moving around in South America. We catch the overnight buses which have the fully reclining and large seats that we can sleep in. That means we avoid the tedium of long bus journeys and we save a night’s accommodation. We typic

ally arrive early morning and then go and look at hotels/hostels. At this time of year we don’t need to book. We pay what is needed for a good clean place with private room and bathroom but try to pay about $30/night although we have ended up paying $50/night very often. We usually have wifi access.

Cuenca is an old colonial town with cobbled streets, old building with balconies and charming squares. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We wander around to find a place for lunch and stumble across Café Eucalyptus where a Salsa Class is going on and they are prepping for a Saturday night Salsa party and so we decide to go back for dinner and dancing.

It’s a really charming building with a huge central room with an internal balcony. We arrive about 8.00pm (wondering if we will be able to stay awake after our all-night travelling) and have dinner while we wait for the music to start. Pisco Sours are great but the wine is horrible. It’s an 8-piece band (5 on percussion) and the music is terrific. Everyone just can’t wait to dance. Around 10.00pm some sort of dance competition starts and the contestants are all dressed to kill with sparkling outfits. Everyone else is in tight jeans and heels. I need some hair oil. Christine says “look at that man’s maracas!” and she soon has me dancing. We dance until 1.00am and chat to all sorts of interesting local people. A great time.