First marriage proposal of the trip
Trip Start
Sep 13, 2004
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9
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Trip End
May 06, 2005
Around Cuenca,
Ecuador
Saturday, September 25, 2004
As there was no-one else for the guided tour I wanted to go on I decided instead to visit the local villages of Gualaceo, Chordeleg and Sigsig. Their Sunday markets were recommended, but I was guessing there would be some activity on a Saturday too.
It cost $0.10 to go from inside the terminal through a turnstile to the bus apron, and consequently many more people boarded at the gate as the bus left the station. Which makes sense as the cost of the whole journey to Gualaceo was $0.65 so it adds quite significantly. I guess it's designed to deter huge numbers of people from prowling around the buses at will.
Unless I missed the turning for the good bits of Gualaceo there isn't that much to recommend it, although I did tuck into a good lunch of roasted pig in the market (see photo), dug striaght off the bone with fingers (someone else's) and eaten with fingers (my own)
01 The new cathedral, Cuenca
. After the pork I was suddenly overcome with squeamishness about the salad possibly having been washed in dodgy water, and I binned most of that surreptitiously when the stallholder wasn't looking. I am pleased to report that the stomach is still holding out fine after the first 2 weeks, touch wood.Having been denied in Cuenca by many a locked church door, I thought it was my duty as a tourist to visit the open church in Chordeleg. It had a gloriously kitsch decoration in one corner (see photo) and a neon sign above the altar. It was doing a brisk trade in prayers, and there was a young child who obviously thought his birthday had come when his mother lifted him to look at the candles, and he started blowing then out. What Cuenca is to furniture, Chordeleg is to jewellery.
Sigsig was the highlight of the day for me, although it's up in the mountains and rained a fair bit whilst I was there, the sun only breaking through as I departed, naturally. It's an attractive town and if I was doing the circuit again I'd start there and work my way back to Gualaceo. Whereas Chordeleg possibly hadn't seen a tourist other than me that day, for Sigsig it might have been several months. People pointed and small children hid in doorways giggling, although I did eventually manage to elicit two out of three names. Women tending stalls occupied their spare time by weaving panama hats, and the boys didn't let a spot of rain put them off their game of football. And of course, I met Luis. He'd lived in the States for 5 years and worked 95 hour weeks illegally before being chucked out for having no papers. As the rain fell harder, he left me for the shelter of his bus with a 'Bye baby'. I'd already bought a ticket for another bus that returned to Cuenca by a different route, but it turned out either to have left early, or else to have been non-existent, I wasn't sure where the truth lay
02 Say cheese!
. So I ended up on Luis' bus, whre he was the conductor. He asked me out for a drink, baby, but fortunately I remembered the boyfriend in Cuenca whom I had invented in our earlier conversation, and who wouldn't have liked it if I'd gone out with another man. Not to be deterred, and despite being married with kids, he proposed. He had to get up a few times to collect fares as people boarded, but none of them sat next to me as I was willing them to do.In the evening as I looked for a restauarant masses in a couple of churches in Cuenca were just finishing, so I completed my tourist duty by viewing the ornate decoration. They were packed to the rafters. Both had guitarrists, and in one he broke into an impromptu rendition of La Bamba (the service was over by then). I must attend a church service at some point to see what it's like.
