Cuenca is a beautiful colonial town in the South of Ecuador with a crystal clear river flowing through the centre. There are spectacular buildings on every street and, although I'm not exactly an architecture fan, it is an enchanting place to lose yourself for a day.
I stayed in an awesome hostel, which just happened to have no people in it. For the whole time I stayed there. I therefore spent the evenings drinking beer with the owners, telling them where I'd been, and trying to use the past tense in a non-comical way. I visited the Museo de la Cultura, which was awesome. I don't normally get particularly into museums but this one was a kinda hodgepodge of several different museums - old coins, modern art, the biggest stamp collection I've ever seen and an exhibition on the shrunken heads of the Shuar people.
Interesting things worth mentioning about the coins and stamps - they had two Penny Black stamps (the first ever stamp) and, looking at the Ecuadorian coins throughout the years, you could see when the Ecuadorian Sucre crashed. Over a period of 4 years the biggest banknote went from 1,000 Sucres to 50,000. For this reason they now use the US Dollar as their national currency (my least favourite currency of all currencies).
The shrunken heads were really interesting! The Shuar people, a tribe that lives in the amazon, would perform this ritual on captured enemies. When an enemy was captured, their head would be cut off (dead or alive), before the warrior retreated back to camp with it. The skin would be cut open and the skull would be removed. The victim's eyes would then be sewn shut and the lips were skewered together. The head is then boiled, reducing it's size, before being filled with hot stones which reduced the size further. In the end the head is about 1/3rd it's original size. Creepy.
Next stop was Montañita. On first glance, it's a sleepy little beach village with some good surf, but it's actually a big party place. I won't lie, all I did was surf in the day and drink beer in the night. The only other thing worth mentioning is that, after staying in probably over 100 hostel beds, I had my first bedbug experience. It was not nice and I still have the bites a week later. Luckily, I only slept in that bed one night - all other sleeps were taken on the beach.
So, that was the week that preceded climbing Chimborazo. Just arrived in Baños a town surrounded by green hills and a very active volcano...
The huge church in the beautiful main square of Cuenca.
Cuenca also has some awesome graffiti.
Another nice church - there are lots of these!
More cool graffiti - I dunno what they were smoking when they came up with this...
The bed with bedbugs! I got what I deserved as I booked the cheapest - in a loft with no walls.
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