Day 41: Ecuador – 15/02/10

We get up early and are down having breakfast at 7.30 am.  Fresh fruit, juice, scrambled eggs and bacon.  Just the thing.  While I get ready, Mike checks out one of the little guide leaflets but it isn’t much help, although it does confirm that what we saw being spit roasted by the roadside yesterday were in fact guinea pigs.  We have decided to go to the Inca and Canaris ruins at Ingapirca in the Province of Canar.

Photo:  Mike on our hotel balcony 

Photo:  Reflections in the glass building opposite 

We leave with our selection of motley maps, only knowing the rough direction in which to go.  The roads are the usual mixture of good, bad and very, very ugly.  Signs disappear, road names are non-existent, and what starts off being a good road becomes a rubble strewn bit of ground which shows no passing resemblance to a highway at all.  And I have never seen many road works.  We don’t get lost as such because we have little idea where we are going, but amazingly after a couple of hours we find a sign for Ingapirca and realise we are just 15 kilometres away, although I think their mileage is as the crow flies because it ends up being a lot more than that.

We pay our $6 each (only $2 for locals), and pay an extra $2 to photograph a rather sullen looking local in traditional dress.  She is very secretive about asking for money and it disappears into her pocket with an amazing slight of hand.  In a country where the minimum wage is $8 a day, it’s no wonder she can afford the mouthful of gold teeth.

Photo:  Lady in local dress

The ruins are surrounded by llamas.  They are not as hairy as the ones we saw higher up but look just as stupid.  I think they are brought in for the tourists to see.

The ruins are impressive, as is the surrounding countryside.

  Photos:  The Inca ruins at Ingapirca

After a walk around we decide to look at the restaurants but they are very basic and although I like rustic food, they look very uninviting.  I remember that the Hotel Victoria has a sister hotel at Ingapirca and as we walk back to the car we see the signs for it, only 500m away.  We find it but their 500m is a lot more than that in reality and I am glad we decide to take the car, especially as it is uphill and in the thinning air, exertion takes more out of us than usual.

The hotel is very rustic and when we enter the restaurant, we are the only people there.  The $10 menu is set, with three choices for each course.  I am not quite sure what I order for my starter, but is some sort of corn mash wrapped in corn leaves.  My main is a lamb stew and the desert is cheese covered in honey.  All very local, Ecuadorian food.  We are also bought a complimentary starter of some sort of enormous corn kernels with chilli sauce and a bright purple hot drink which is alcohol that has had flowers steeped in it.  I can taste the alcohol too much so Jim drinks mine as well. 

Photo:  Mike with his hot purple flower infused drink

The waiter is a real sweetie and attempts to explain the background behind everything we eat and drink. 

Photo:  Our waiter displaying the flowers that are used in the drink 

He even brings out a local hat and lets Jim try it on.  If you wear the bobbles on the front it shows you are single.  If they are at the back, it shows you are married.

Photo:  Jim displaying his marital status

As we are eating our starters, two people walk in and I can’t believe the small world we are in.  It’s Darolyn and Peter from Asolare, another World ARC boat.  Darolyn lives in Ecuador and joined the crew for the Panama Canal transit, and is a friend of Penny and Peter’s from Tortola.  Of all the restaurants in the country, and they have to walk into this one ….. well you get the picture.

We have a nice chat catching up with what Peter has been doing over the last week or so (he didn’t go to Puerto Lucia with the rest of the fleet) then tuck into our lunches and leave, but not without Peter giving me some valuable information on buying pearls.

We drive back to Cuenca and arrive around 4.30 pm, tired and in need of a sleep.  We arrange to meet Jim in reception around 6 pm to go for a walk.

Cuenca is a city with a beautiful, colonial centre, dominated as usual by a cathedral.  We walk towards the cathedral square, making sure that we face the on-coming traffic so that we can see any buckets of water coming our way.  Yes, they are still at it!

  Photos:  Views of the cathedral at dusk

Photos:  Beautiful colonial buildings dominate the old city

We walk carefully under archways but forget to look upwards and are suddenly caught by a bucket of water being thrown from a balcony overhead.  Most of it splashes harmlessly onto the pavement, and we can hear hysterical giggles from our unseen assailants.  Almost back at the hotel we see a car coming towards us and the window being lowered.  Mike and Jim dash around the corner but I lag behind, legging it at the last minute, and just in time too.  A water bomb (a balloon filled with water) lands just behind me and explodes feet away.   Never have I been so happy to get to a hotel lobby!

None of us are hungry enough to bother eating so I head off for a shower and hair wash and Mike and Jim head to the bar where they engage in conversation with what is obviously one of the members of the owning family.