Cuenca, Ecuador

On Monday I took my first trip outside of Guayaquil! Phil´s aunt and uncle, Vincent and Rosa Julia were incredibly generous to bring me to Cuenca, which is nestled in the mountains outside of Guayaquil. The trip took about 3 hours by car but the time flew by because the scenery was incredibly breathtaking. My jaw was in my lap the whole time. Even after spending a month in the beautiful mountains of Peru, I was still amazed at the beauty of these mountains.

It was (and has been) pretty cloudy in Guayaquil, so as we started to climb up the mountains there were points at which we couldn´t seen anything but clouds in front of us. The roads were as you would expect, winding back and forth with occasional bumpy patches. They were in the midst of working on the roads to Cuenca so we often had to wait to let traffic in the opposite direction pass before continuing, but I didn´t mind stopping because it gave us more time to look at the view!

It was incredible to watch the trees and plants change the higher we climbed. We started by passing the rice fields and banana trees, along with numerous palm trees...and as we climbed the trees started to change to the point where suddenly we were surrounded by pine trees! We couldn´t see much around us until we climbed above the cloud line, at which point it looked like we were in an airplane, flying above the clouds. I can´t wait to post pictures for everyone to see...it was quite dramatic.

Once we were above the clouds we had an amazing view of the top of the mountains. At various points on our drive I was reminded of different places I´d visited but had never seen the landscape of all of this places in one place before! The fields were so green that I was reminded of Ireland, and then as we climbed higher the landscape reminded me of photos I´d seen of Switzerland, and then as we climbed higher still it felt like I was back in Peru. Vincent pulled over a number of times so I could take pictures. I will post them soon.

Cuenca itself is also beautiful. It has a European feel about it and the Spanish influence in the architecture is obvious as well. I LOVED it. As I do with every place I visit, I was picturing what it would be like to live there. It´s a town full of art and reminds me a bit of a university town with a river running past the medical school, with lots of people walking and not a lot of traffic. We stayed for one night and then enjoyed the amazing scenery on the way back home the next morning.