Me encanta Cuenca (though the photo above is of Mt. Ruminahui)
Got here yesterday after a 40 minute flight from Quito. The flight attendant left an (unoccupied and untethered) infant car seat right next to us for the entire duration of the flight....not something you see on a US flight.
Cuenca has been good so far: warm and sunny...a far change from chilly and windy Cotopaxi where we spent 3 nights camping/bundled up in the refugio.
We got breakfast at the local market: pork (scraped straight from a whole pig laid flat on the table), hominy, mashed potatoes and orange juice for lulu; granola, pecans, yogurt and mangoes for me. All local and all yummy - a far cry from the Washington apples we bought in a supermercado in Quito a couple of days ago....so much for coming all the way to south america.
Cotopaxi (4 days ago) was rough. We hired a tour guide to take us to climb Cotopaxi (the 4th highest active volcano in the mundo) for $250 per person - it included an "acclimatization" hike to Mt. Ruminahui as well to help us get used to the high elevation of Cotopaxi (which starts at about 17000 ft and goes all the way to 19,600ft. Ruminahui started at about 10,000 ft and the summit was at 15,300, so we thought it would be a good enough warm-up climb.
While the Ruminahui hike was beautiful (miles of Andean paramo with not a person in sight), it was challenging as well - the last 30 minutes were perhaps the toughest I had ever done: it was rock climbing at 19,000 feet. Lulu refused to go to the summit and Pablo (the guide) had to make her a little shelter to sit in and wait while he and I attempted to climb the summit. I was roped to Pablo with a carabiner to hold onto for grip. 30 some cold, slippery, rocky and scary minutes later, we reached the top. The summit was about 2 ft x 3ft wide - barely enough space for one person to comfortably stand. I huddled up in a corner while Pablo was jumping around (literally) in his 1 foot of space so he could get a better cell phone signal to call the taxi to come pick us up at the lagoon at the base.
Quito, which is about 100kms north of the summit was clearly visible in the distance. When you´re this high, the air is unbelievably pure, thin and fresh. And cold.
(Since I don´t have my camera cable with me right now, check out a photo of Ruminahui snagged off the innernet, at the top of this post)
We finally made it to the laguna at about 6.30pm...6 hrs after we started. Cotopaxi was scheduled for the next day, so it was a quick trip to the car, a yummy and warm lentils+quinoa dinner made by lulu and a warm and early awakening on the day of the climb. I didn´t quite feel up for it given that I had never so much as been on a glacier (discounting the 2 hrs of monkeying around Alaska in 2006), let alone climb to the summit of an icy mountain, but we figured it was worth a try. They took us out for a practice climb at the foot of the glacier just to get used to crampons and the ice axe. It was fun - I was loving it. Lulu flat out refused to get on the glacier, though :) I was feeling a bit nauseous though, given that we were at 18,000ft.
After about 2 hours of practice, we came back to the refuge, ate a warm dinner of potato soup and bundled up in the bunk beds at about 7pm (the climb was scheduled to start at midnight). Because it was a weekend, the refuge was really hopping with about 40-50 pumped-up mountaineers all getting antsy and worked-up before the big hike. We, of course, were nauseous and scared. At about midnight when they started waking everyone one, we decided not to go for it...the nausea was only going to get worse with elevation and I wasn´t especially thrilled about the idea of crossing crevasses in the middle of the night.
So much for that. Oh well.
It being Sunday today, pretty much the whole town of Cuenca is shuttered up. Except places like this internet cafe.
Cuenca used to be the 2nd largest Inca town, after Cusco. Until the Spanish came, that is. It´s sad and frustrating how the Spaniards´ dream of the Catholicization of an entire continent came true with the passing of the centuries. Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor, reportedly threw the Bible that a Spanish friar offered to him when he found that the Bible didn´t make any sounds. That was apparently, the official justification for the conquest, slavery and decimation of an entire contintent and its peoples.
I can´t stop kicking myself for not getting Eduardo Galeano´s Memory of Fire with me from pdx. That would have been the perfect companion to a S. America trip. I did see a sign for a (closed) libreria selling English books today, so maybe they might have a copy that I can comprar tomorrow.
The plan is to stay in Cuenca for 2 more nights before flying out to Santiago (via Guayaquil) on the 26th. Off to cook some pasta for now. Adios.
ps - Lulu came down with a severe case of quemadura (sunburn). Remedy? go to the local farmers market, get a free stick of aloe from a concerned and helpful farmer lady, cut it open and rub the juice on the face.
