From Baños to the Coast

Okay, so last week we traveled down through the middle of Ecuador, in the highlands, then over to the coast where we are now. Here´s a little snipit of out trip.

We took a bus (about 3 hours) to a little town called Riobamaba. It was a cute town, but we didn´t go to see the town. We went to take a train the next day, south toward Cuenca. The train is famous for it´s decent down ¨La Nariz del Diablo¨(the devil´s nose). This decent of course is only about the last hour of the 7 hour train ride. Most people sit on top of the train for the whole ride. We did too, even though it was lightly raining the entire time. It was a fun experience. The train went pretty slow and only derailed once. Overall a successful trip. Here´s a few pics of the train..

At the end of the train ride we ended up in a town called Alausi. There we ate a really quick lunch and then jumped on a bus to Cuenca to finish off our day of traveling. It took about four and a half hours to get to Cuenca. Cuenca was a town that I ws really excited about visiting, but by the time we got there I (this is Cass by the way) was kinda over the colonial towns and don´t think that I enjoyed it as much as I may have, had it been towards the beginning of our trip. I also got a little sick, so that also made it hard to enjoy. It was still beautiful though. We dedcided to only stay three nights, and since we only had two full days there, we decided to take a ¨city tour¨to make sure we saw all that we should. Here´s a few pics...

Typical residencial city street

the ¨New Cathedral¨ It´s the second largest church in South America. It was pretty amazing. The next one is also of the cathedral, from the back...

A flower market a block long... I love flowers!

Another pretty church. We didn´t go in this one, but it sure was pretty at night.

Ecuador is the home of the Panama hat (not Panama). Cuenca is where most are made and sold. Aren´t we cute?!

And, classic Ecuador.. rifles are sold with backpacks. Who would have thought...

One of the paintings in the museum of modern art. We loved the contrast it shows between the ¨have´s and the have not´s.¨ Check it out.

The end of our tour, the balcony of the city.

After Cuenca, we took a private transpot, a big van, to the largest city in Ecuador, Guyaquil (population 3 million). We only spent one night here. It ended up just being an ïn-between¨(between the highlands and the coast).

We are still alive and smiling.

This is the cutest corridor in the city, you see it in ALL the books, flyers, etc. It was recently remodeled and cleaned up, it really is pretty. This was the first place we went that was truely warm. It was humid too, and after walking up these some 400 steps I was drenched..oh well.

In the park right behind our hotel there were Eguanas, just hanging out.... lots of them. (And turtles, fish and pigeons).

Picture from the boardwalk. On the map Guayaquil looks kinda like it´s on the ocean, but it´s actually on a river. This is the river.

So, from Gualquil we came to the coast. We were going to just stop in this little surfer town called Mantañita, then continue to this other town called Puerto Lopez, but we like it here in Montañita so much that I´ll think we´ll stay here and just take a day trip to Puerto Lopez. We will head back to Quito on Wednesday or Thursday then fly out on Friday. More pics to come from the beach.

Be sure to check out our ¨Trip Map¨ to the right to get a better idea of where we´ve been!!

Love you all and miss you...see you soon.