Cuenca, Ecuador

SHARLA: Got up early and were picked up by our guide, Martin, from TerraDiversa tours. We drove about an hour and a half out of Cuenca into the Cajas National Park where we were to begin our mountain biking tour. We were at about 13,000 feet, and the air was very thin. It took me a little while to catch my breath. We were in what we in the U.S. call the "tundra," definitely above tree level. It was very beautiful. As we descended, the flowers and the terrain changed drastically.

 The name of the tour was 30 Bridges and Cajas National Park, which was very appropro considering there were at least 30 bridges on our route. The road we were on followed a beautiful river down through the mountains. It reminded me a lot of Colorado in this area. It was absolutely gorgeous, and you could smell the scent of flowers in the air almost the whole time. There were lots of nice ranches, mostly milk cows. We passed many milk cans (like the ones that the ranchers in the U.S. used years ago. A milk truck comes through and picks them up, and the ranchers are paid every two weeks. We saw cows WAY up on the mountainside. Not sure how they get up that high! This is an absolutely beautiful area of Ecuador....may be right up near the top of my favorites. The area is called Bababon after the mountain that surrounds it.

We stopped for lunch at a hot springs thermal bath. It was in a beautiful location. The hottest spring was being drained and cleaned. This is done every Monday. There was another pool open that wasn't as hot, but we decided to get in anyway. We asked the men to stand on the other side of the building and stripped down and went skinny dipping...it was pretty awesome! After lunch, we continued on our way stopping frequently to take pictures. The road was very bumpy, so by the time we rode for over three hours, I was ready to get off the bike, but it was an amazing day.

This was our favorite of the 30 bridges.

Back at the condo, we cleaned up and then laid down for a little bit. I read, and Marsha napped. We met Jessica downtown so that she could pick up a necklace that she ordered yesterday. Made some phone calls home, and then stopped for a pizza to go. It was a very good pizza. I hope you all had as wonderful a day as we did!

This "castle" was just built on the side of this
hill.  Pretty random!

Women washing clothes in the rivers is a
very common sight.

I thought Martin was a Ben Stiller look-alike.

MARSHA: we did our first bike ride today. we rode 34 kilometers thru the caja national park. the tour is called 30 bridges. we started at 3500 meters which our guide said was about 13000 ft. there were farms all the way down with milk cows. the people would milk them and leave the milk in containers at the end of their driveway for the milk truck to pick up. we stopped at a thermal bath which was out in the middle of nowhere. we made the guides go on the other side of the little bathroom building and we stripped down and got in. was awesome and i could have stayed there for hours but we only stayed in for a few minutes and had a picnic lunch in the grass beside a beautiful bridge then continued on. after the ride we just cleaned up and chilled out and went to the city center to pick up some earrings that we had made to match necklaces that we bought last night. handmade. beautiful and cheap!!! massages in the morning. yay!!!