Path Less Travelled - South America. Series 2 Post 9 - Cuenca - New experiences

Cuenca, Ecuador

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

It was a short bus ride to Cuenca, a city with a lot of good recommendations from fellow travellers. Third largest in Ecuador, Cuenca is a more religious and 'tranquillo' place as my taxi driver told me on my way to the hostel. There are a few beautiful places to see but foremost it is a place to just walk around and enjoy the calm surrounding.? I reached there in the night and met a Danish and a Canadian guy who were living in the same dorm. It was going to be a turning point of the whole trip and take it to another level.

We talked about our travels till then and they told me about how they were lucky and escaped various robbing attempts. It confirmed my doubts about safety in Ecuador. Not only them but many others had theirs bags slashed and stuff stolen. The Danish guy escaped by giving 50 cents to a robber who held him at the edge of a broken beer bottle. But as you all know, I am just plain lucky. So, I didn't need to worry. The three of us walked around the city looking for some place with music or party but due to the sacred week (Semana Santa) every thing was closed. Disappointed we found an Arabic restaurant serving falafel sandwich. As we were eating and shooting crazy ideas, we decided to host a party the next day and negotiated with the restaurant owner to lend us his place. We took charge of the music, drinks and security.

Three tasks for the three of us. It seemed like a crazy idea to do something in a city that we had just come to and didn't know anything about. But sounded cool and more importantly crazy. On our way back we met a guy who asked us for money as he was stranded in Cuenca and wanted to go to Quito. Remember him. We gave him a dollar split amongst the three of us trying to avoid any trouble. The next day we made flyers to promote the party and distributed them in the city over the day at the same time visiting the various monuments in the city. We must have given out over 70 flyers to many tourists and local people. In the evening we bought the drinks and and setup the music at the restaurant.

We also met an Argentinian band in a hostel we went to promote our event and they agreed to play live at our party.

There were more than 50 people who came to the party and it was a mix of both tourists and locals. Everyone enjoyed a lot and we had a great time organising the party. The guy who took our dollar the night before, too came in for a drink. This was a cool experience and I got to know a lot about the city as we talked to a lot of people throughout the day.

I believe that Cuenca is a city of contrasts. But it doesn't give you subtle hints, the differences are right in your face. The owner of our hostel told me that the city was very religious and people would not want to party or even open their shops during the holy week. Every church in town had a massive mass and most of the city seemed to be lighting candles and singing. We still did have a nice party and had locals attend it as well. There was also a 'prohibited' museum which had satanic art and even a devil's bible on display. Really weird. I was surprised that these guys didn't get trouble from the local people.

Also known to be a very traditional city it has a very strong Arabic influence with the main street full of shawarma restaurants and everyone smoking Sheesha.? The other thing I noticed was that life seemed to be moving too fast for the people there. I don't mean the day to day life was fast but people just seemed to move through life stages faster. Every kid who looked 12 was going around with a girl and most girls are married by the age of 20. I saw many couples with kids who looked like kids themselves. The society being prude does not give good sex education but does not stop the kids from going out together. I saw quite a few young people enjoying the sheesha quite openly at our party restaurant. There were also stories of people leaving their kids behind to find work in richer countries and never coming back. They left at 25 with 3 kids in town. It was not all that gloomy though. We saw some shrunken heads in a museum which was a local tradition. After death, the tribes would take out the skull and fill the head with cotton and dry the skin to make it shrink. It looks really cool and scary. There is beautiful graffiti on the street walls and new painting keep coming up every day.

The city centre has a huge cathedral and it looks really big as the plaza is quite small. There are many bridges along the river and one of them was built only half and overlooks the river. It is even shown on the map as the broken bridge.? One day we decided to go to one of these bridges and film the Danish guys perform some prakhor tricks. This is a sport where you jump on walls and railings and basically enjoy moving. After a few tries, we managed to get a good video of the Danish dude jump from one edge of the bridge to the other, which had at least a 15 m fall on each side. Brilliant.?

I met another couple of people from Germany and US who joined us for a hike to the nearby national park of Cajas. Given the rain, the whole track had turned into a slush of mud and we had to sign responsibility waiver forms before entering the park with our normal sports shoes. A bit of risk makes the whole experience even more rewarding. We did know that they found a body of an old man in the lake a few days ago.

But it was a good 5 hour trek that we finished in 4 hours even when we got lost a couple of times on our way. We came back to the starting point and ate like pigs covered in mud. A brilliant day outside in the nature.

A lot happened in Cuenca and I made some good friends. There was not much in the city but it made me realise that any place can be fun if you are in the mood to enjoy. I left my sleeping bag behind for the german guy. I hope he got it and was useful for him.