We first heard about Cuenca, Ecuador’s 3^rd largest city, soon after we entered the country. Like Quito it had once been a center of Spanish colonialism. The architecture and narrow, cobblestone city streets of the Historic District have been so well preserved it has been classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. I loved Cartegena, but Cuenca with its smaller size and beautiful architecture that I think is more grand than Quito has become my favorite city thus far in South America. It also is a friendly place to me. In Baños we met an American family from San Fransisco, Sheila and Mark and their twins Ailish and Liam, age 13, who are now living in Cuenca for a year to improve their Spanish. We contacted them the morning after we arrived and Mark and Liam took us to their favorite bike shop run by Galo, Ecuador’s champion mountain biker. We spruced up our bikes and wardrobes with needed replacements/repairs. We agreed to meet the next morning for a city cultural and museum tour ride event organized by Margarit, a leading advocate for cycling in Cuenca. Not really knowing what to expect, Mark, Liam, David and I joined a group of 100 or more cyclists gathering in San Sebastion Square. After opening remarks, calistenics, and being serenaded by a brass band we bicycled through the Historic District with a police escort stopping traffic. We were lead to five of Cuenca’s museums where we got off our bikes for short tours. At the end we were treated to a display of Latin dancing in the park. It was a delightfully surprising way to get a taste of the culture of Cuenca and Ecuador, and to participate in Margarit’s efforts to encourage cycling in the city. Later that evening we met Mark and Sheila for dinner and enjoyed vegetarian options and great conversation. As fellow travelors far from home, we felt a comraderie and were reminded in our easy conversation of friends and family back home. David and I so enjoyed Cuenca we ended up staying a total of 4 nights. One reason to extend our stay was to meet up again with James, the British cyclist we met in Colombia, who we knew from e-mails would be cycling in soon. He met us at our hotel and we caught up on our various adventures since our last meeting. Intending to take different routes into Peru, we said our goodbyes with the hope that somewhere south, in the not too distant future, our paths would cross again.

Indigenous family along the road near Palmira

We climbed to over 3500m where it was a cool, misty 13°C; then descended 1000m on slick new concrete pavement, still under construction, to 21°C.  Cuenca is the third largest city in Ecuador, with colonial architecture and cathedrals that rival Quito in grandeur.  We plan to spend a few days here avoiding robbers.

Gusty headwinds and road construction made our morning ride difficult.  We found a hostal midday and then cycled up the steep road to Ingapirca in the afternoon.  Ingapirca is the most significant Inca ruin in Ecuador.  Canals from a nearby stream still surround the site where water once flowed through stone-lined channels to ritual baths for the Virgins.  The tight-fitting stone blocks are not of uniform size, or even square.

Darkness fell before we found a place to stay, for the first time this trip; and also had our first 2000m day of climbing. We started the day with a steep climb out of Aluasì, then stopped in Guasuntos for a fiesta honoring San Luis del Rey. We met Iñez there, who’d worked in New Jersey for 35 years and has now returned to live in Ecuador. She invited us to stay for this sixth day of a twelve day festival. We stayed for an hour and a half, not knowing how much climbing lay ahead. Our elevation stayed between 2400m and 3100m, with views out over the clouds covering the coastal plain; and several times we though we’d reached the high point for the day. (My map only shows contour lines every 800m, and we closely followed the 2600m contour, crossing it five times). We did not reach the high point until 5:45pm. Sun sets in the tropics around six and it gets dark fast. At six we coasted into Zhud, the first town for 40 km, hoping a hotel would be there. A shop women said no, but a hosteria lay ten km away, then after seeing our disappointment she said only 3 km, and all downhill. It was 7 km, and only the first 2 km downhill. That’s where my tire went flat. With daylight waning fast, Julie went on ahead; then I just pumped up the slow leak. With 100 strokes on the pump, refilled every 2 km, we eventually reached the streetlights of Suscal. As a crowd gathered while I patched my tire we learned that we passed the hosteria 1 km back, but needed to eat at a restaurant in town anyway.

A heavily overcast sky hid the peaks we saw yesterday as we climbed out of Riobamba. We stopped at the first Spanish church in Ecuador, built in 1534, in Cajabamba. The traffic dropped considerably after the Panamericana highway split, and we had a nice gradual downhill past red and yellow fields of quinoa, on a freshly paved road. After a rather barren high valley of pine trees, we descended to the colonial town of Aluasi, with a statue of San Pedro standing atop a hill.

Chimborazo (6310m) rising above the town of Mocha (3150m)

Today we saw clearly all the snow-capped peaks (Cotopaxi, Tungurahua, Altar, and Chimborazo) we missed seeing a week ago on the Avenue of the Volcanoes.  We hiked around our hosteria before our 8 am breakfast; and had even better views as we climbed up a new paved road to Mocha and the Panamericana highway.  We visited with a couple of the many cyclists out for a Sunday morning training ride.  Waiting for breakfast-included delayed our start; so we stop early at a cozy hotel here and plan to start earlier tomorrow morning.

Cable car over a deep gorge between Cusua & Bilbao

Julie & I were gloating about our good luck in finding that we could take the short route to Riobamba on a traffic-free road after all.  We met two local women getting off at the washed-out-by-mudflow intersection who said that we could get through on bikes.  We soon found out why the traffic was so light.  After 5km uphill the road ends at a deep gorge with no bridge.  There is an untended cable car that looks so dangerous that even the locals haven’t used it for a while.  The basket is not big enough for a bike; and if we tried lashing bikes under basket, might have lost bikes or lives.  So we turned around midday and continued on one of our biggest climbs yet.

The road (upper right) along the deep Pastaza river gorge

Our slow climb back up to Baños from the rainy jungle offered us more time to enjoy the views.  We took several coffee breaks when it really poured; then hiked down to a huge waterfall as the rain let up.  By the time we got back here the clouds parted and exposed the snow-capped volcano Tungurahua.

Cable car crossing to the Cascada Monto de la Novia

We cycled down out of the Andes into the Amazon basin today.  The “Route of the Cascades” is a popular bike ride.  Of the five tunnels on the way, four have bypasses for cyclists; and waterfalls are everywhere you look.  We biked with two French cyclists touring Ecuador and turned around at “The door to the Amazon”.  We spent the night at Vrindavan, a yoga retreat 3km from the highway in the jungle and had our first soaking rain since Panama.  This is the rain forest after all.  I stayed at the original Vrindabn, in India, in 1976.  It is the Holy City for the Hare Krishna sect of Hinduism.

Painted and polished Baños and the beauty of the surrounding mountains attracts both domestic and foreign tourists.  The public volcanic baths, beautiful church and 300ft waterfall were the town’s historic draws.  Today it is filled with hotels, cute restaurants, businesses offering various adventure tours, and candy making storefronts. We enjoyed the relaxed and safe atmosphere and the many vegetarian possibilities in the tourist restaurants. In the afternoon, after doing laundry and having a leisurely lunch we did a bike ride up a steep mountain road (happily without panniers) to try to get a view of the volcano Tungurahua, which was hidden behind the smaller mountains looming over the town. Unfortunately the volcano remained hidden in clouds this day, but we had wonderful coffee and cake at the exclusive Luna Runtun resort where we enjoyed overlooks of the town and countryside.  Later that evening back in Baños, as we waited for a table to open up at the popular El Jardin restaurant, we were surprised by Romy and Tomas, the German honeymooning couple we had met several days before in Chaupi. They invited us to share their table with them. After great conversation and food, I was beginning to feel like Ecuador was a small place where one might meet old friends on a night on the town.