Arrived in Cuenca

We took the free hotel shuttle from central Guayaquil to the airport. We weren't flying anywhere, but the big Guayaquil bus station is only a fifteen minute walk from the airport.

As we were walking between the two, there was a coach bus loading outside of a tourist office and they were calling out "Cuenca!".

But the problem was we had no cash! We were getting low the day before and I had tried two different ATM's. One was out of service and one didn't accept foreign debit cards. I figured there would be a lot of ATM's at the bus station (and I was correct) but we hadn't made it there yet.

The Guayaquil airport is actually quite nice.

So we had to turn down that opportunity. We went to the bus station, used an ATM and got some cash, and went looking for the correct ticket booth for the bus to Cuenca. There were probably 50 ticket booths, and most of the ones that were open had huge line ups.

We had zero ambition to wait in line for what looked like it might be an hour or more. It was already after 11am, and we knew we had a four hour bus ride ahead of us.

The bus station was a zoo!

Likely extra busy because this was the start of Carnival celebrations.

We decided to walk back to the tourist office where the other bus was looking for passengers. As we expected, the other bus had already left, and they didn't have any space left on later buses. But there were a bunch of taxis there, and one asked where we wanted to go I said Cuenca, and we were led to a nice new SUV type of car but he wanted $25 USD each. The normal bus price is $11 USD. We walked away and the price quickly went down to $20. For the convenience, we decided it was worth it. 

We had to wait about 15 minutes for two more passengers, and ended up sharing with an older father and son.

Scenery along the way.

The first half of the trip was flat and not so exciting, but the second half was climbing up into the mountains. We started the day at sea level, and ended it at 8,400' (2,560 meters).

This is rainy season, and there are a lot of landslides.

Climbing above the clouds.

Too bad we couldn't stop for photos.

Looks like a great hiking area!

As we were entering Cuenca, it became obvious they had had a lot of rain!

Another convenience of having a private car is that our driver was able to drop us off walking distance from Louise and Mike's house. We enjoyed the 2 km walk just to stretch our legs after the long car ride.

This river is full!

Great to see Mike and Louise again... the last time we saw them was in Ottawa in November of 2024. They've been living here in Cuenca for three years now.

Our accommodation for the next few days.

Cheers!

Kevin, Ruth, Louise, Mike.

Louise had made us all a nice meal and it sure did go down well since we never did have any lunch!

So as I mentioned, it's Carnival weekend here in Ecuador. Besides the parades and other activities, it is customary to use cans of spray foam and throw water balloons, and sometimes even eggs to celebrate. It's all a little much, and it's not Mike and Louise's favorite time of year! So we're not sure how much we're going to take part in the celebrations... we'll see!

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