Monday saw us running around like blue arsed flies. A breakfast bagel some tai chi and out the door.
Downtown Cuenca was a mess as usual as there isn’t much street parking and what there is, is some sort of impenetrable pay plan, not that I’ve seen any meter maids or parking tickets, so the locals just stop if they have business in a store as you see above. Getting around him takes time and some nerve. Asshole. Find a parking lot like we did.
This is the 3rd of November parking lot and our 9 foot tall van, which includes the much vaunted air conditioner on the roof, fit underneath the entrance roof just fine. Most city parking is underground or a tiny hole in a building that will not accommodate our tank. So the first thing we do is look on Google Street View to see if we can possibly fit. When your van is 21 feet long you need to make sure the street is wide enough to allow a turn into a narrow entrance. Failure leads to a horn symphony in an angry key from waiting motorists as I have learned.
While we went to look at hats we left Rusty napping on the bed with the rooftop fan on and open back windows as a 70 degree day at 8400 feet means air conditioning is not needed. $1:20 an hour is too expensive for most locals so we had plenty of room in the lot (and clean toilets always a bonus).
The van driver had never heard of the hat museum but we gave him directions across town. For some reason it feels as though every destination in Cuenca is always 15 minutes away by car. It’s magic.
Cuenca is famous for making textiles and cloth and also Panama hats which are not called Ecuadoran hats for a reason.
The hats got their name from the early 20th century when the US was hiring locals to dig the famous Central American canal in the appalling heat. The Americans noticed their workers all wearing a particular kind of hat, in Panama.
And because the American overseers weren’t endowed with superhuman curiosity about the headgear they just called them Panama hats. And such was their influence the name has stuck.
The museum is put on by a hat maker of course and the history is a lead up to a sales room which makes me cringe.
But Layne nothing daunted strolled in and bought a small basket she could use as a souvenir.
I dislike wearing hats so no way was I buying a straw Panama hat.
From there we wandered down the street towards a covered market. The convenience stores here like Colombia do not make shopping a pleasure as they are locked up tight and you have to order through bars to the prisoner inside.
The market by contrast is wide open and patrolled by armed security guards. And of course being a market the shopper-in-chief soon dived in and left me to wander around to see for myself the delights on offer. Dead meat photos ahead.
If you can’t afford a box of cereal you can buy it in smaller packages. That’s how poor this country is:
Layne bought toasted corn kernels. Ecuadorans love “tostados” why I don’t know. Imagine biting into a charred piece of powdery chalk.
I bought a piece of sponge cake and a glass of warm milk for a buck from a passing vendor. It was surprisingly good and not too sweet.
Lovely broccoli and a perfect cauliflower were treats Layne couldn’t pass up.
The biggest blocks of cane sugar I’ve ever seen.
Mixed cereal still life:
Pretty sure they aren’t Ecuadoreans. There are a lot of foreigners in Cuenca and I guess some like to shop here as a matter of course.
Time for lunch. $2:50 each got us a hot plate and as much juice as we could drink.
Our lunch companions shied away from talking to us. I remarked to Layne that Colombians would have been quizzing us madly and laughing. These two looked away.
The food was pretty good. I like stewed meat in these places as it’s unlikely to be undercooked. This is called “pollo seco” which means dried chicken but it’s not dry at all. Unlike in Colombia here you get a sauce with your food and it was good.
Flash forward to us driving in the van and going up to the city overlook. It was as usual a circus of souvenir and dust catcher stalls which we avoided by parking down the street a bit.
Seen from above Cuenca is pretty unremarkable. Been there, done that, got the picture.
And no, we weren’t paying to walk out on the glass bridge.
Layne had a tooth cleaning appointment, I told you we were busy. At the dentists we met three young Argentine travelers. They wanted to reach the US but the cost of crossing the Darien Gap means they will turn around in Colombia. Luca, the dark haired one, has a brother who was hired to play for the soccer team in Cuenca so they have a free place to stay in town.
From the weird coincidence file they mentioned they had lost their Starlink stand. Oh I said, I know where theirs one that’s been thrown away. It’s ten minutes from here. I drove them over to our former campground and sure enough there was the discarded Starlink with its stand. It was chopped up because someone must have cut it to mount it permanently on the roof and they no longer needed the stand. They kids were astonished. I guess now we have somewhere to stay when we reach Argentina. As an aside they too told us Peru is filthy and Bolivia in their opinion is a destination is not worth seeing, cold dirty and filled with resentful residents striking all the time. Sounds charming.
And while Layne was chatting with her dentist who spoke fluent English as he cleaned her teeth, I got a new 3M heat shield film applied to our new Peugeot windshield. On our first sunny day we noticed how hot the van got and how much we missed the sun protection of our original windshield with 3M. We had had the film applied in Panama and it was a life saver in this equatorial sunshine (when it isn’t raining) so we wanted it back.
$150 and ninety minutes later and we were ready for the heat and high altitude sunshine. They did a great job and the sun, by now totally intimidated, hid behind some heavy gray rain clouds as usual.
This by the way is how you put out trash in Ecuador:
The vet called and Rusty’s papers to enter Peru are ready for pick up. I have a walking tour scheduled later today around town and Wednesday Layne has a spa day, so Thursday we hope we will swim the Pacific Ocean near the city of Tumbes in Peru.
