Cuenca
Trip Start
Mar 18, 2007
1
15
101
Trip End
Mar 16, 2008
Cuenca,
Ecuador
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Have spent the last few days in Cuenca, the 3rd largest city in Ecuador and a UNESCO world heritage site. We have been staying at the Hotel Milan, and this is the most expensive place we have stayed so far. However for the extortionate price of 10 USD pppn, you get cable tv, a balcony and breakfast included, plus lots of hot water which over here is actually quite exciting!
It has been a fairly quiet time as Tom has been a little under the weather, but Cuenca is certainly a town for the ladies as every second shop is either a shoe, clothes or jewelry shop...so while he has been recovering I have been doing a little bit of investigating on my own. Unfortunately I only have a small rucksac which is already pretty heavy so it has been more a case of window shopping, this isnīt too unpleasant though as the buildings are stunning
Cuenca
.Today we took a trip to the museo del banco central (same name as Quito, I know), which aside from having some excellent displays had Inca ruins out the back , they had also reconstructed the ways of Inca farming, which was very interesting and there was even a couple of llamas out there too!
Cuenca is the home of the panama hat (it is actually called a monticristo, my spelling might be a bit off there), and we also visited a local museum where you could see how the hats are made. There are different qualities of hat depending on how fine the weave is, and a superfine hat can take a month to make and cost 500 USD. We also popped in to visit the hat shop of Alberto as recommended in the lonely planet (well we actually kind of stumbled upon it). Alberto himself gave us a guided tour, and showed us all the postcards he has received from satisfied customers all over the world and all the newspaper articles written about him. We felt rather guilty not to buy a hat from him as he was so lovely, but they would have rather suffered in the rucksac.
Next stop is Loja and onto Vilcabamba, known as the valley of longevity (as the residents are supposed to live until about 120 years old) but also muy bonito for a bit of walking.
Bye for now.
