Cuenca, Guayaquil and Quito

SHARLA: Not much to report for the last two days. Yesterday, we had to leave beautiful Cuenca. We took a last walk around the downtown area and ate breakfast at Cafe Austria. We were supposed to meet Allen and Judy back at the condo at 11:30am, but we were five minutes late and they had to go run errands, so we missed them :(

The ride back to Guayaquil was quite a bit better than the one going to Cuenca. Except for the first few minutes when he was taking the curves on two wheels. We had to ask him to PLEASE slow down. We were lucky because the clouds were mostly gone this time, and we were able to see a lot more of the Cajas National Park. It is really beautiful. At one point along the way, the clouds hang onto the mountain below the highway and it almost feels like you are flying above the clouds in an airplane.

Back in Guayaquil, Jessica had to go to work, so we hung out at her son's house. We were supposed to go to the circus with Jessica's daughter-in-law and granddaughters, but turns out it wasn't until the next night. Instead, we went to the mall and I bought a tiny English-Spanish dictionary and then Marsha and I went to see the movie, Wall Street. It was an okay movie. Cell phones went off the whole time, and people actually just talked the whole time. When I asked Jessica about this, she said it's normal....the only place people turn off their cell phones is in church. I thought people in the U.S. were on the their cell phones a lot until I came here. Pretty funny!

Marsha playing with Jessica's grandkids....
"right foot on red, left hand on yellow"

We got up this morning and ate homemade granola and fruit cereal, got dressed and packed our backpacks. Jessica took us to a new mall in Guayaquil that looks like a very nice hotel. It only opened one month ago, and pretty much only has restaurants open there. We stopped for coffee, and even though we had just eaten breakfast, Jessica ordered several typical Ecuadorian dishes for us to try. We didn't want to be rude, so we ate them. We were so stuffed, we had to roll back to the car. We went to another mall, and walked around....really just to waste time until it was time to go to the airport. Said our goodbyes to Jessica, and the flight to Quito was a quick 45 minutes.

Jessica and Marsha at the new mall

We hit Quito a rush hour and our hotel, the Hotel San Francisco de Quito, is downtown, so it took a while. In fact, the first taxi driver got lost, and we had to transfer to another taxi in order to get to our hotel. After we checked in, believe it or not, we were hungry again. We walked a few blocks to the plaza where the police revolt took place just one week ago, and found a great Italian restaurant (Cafe del Fraille) to eat which was located in a beautiful building adjacent to the presidential palace. The pasta there was incredible, and we ate until we were miserable....AGAIN.

Tomorrow, we are going to find our way to the bus terminal and catch a bus to Cotacachi north of here about three hours. We get to leave our big backpacks here at the hotel in Quito so that we get to only take our little backpacks. We are coming back here in three days, so it will be nice not to have to drag all of our stuff with us. We love this hotel in Quito....we stayed here last time we came to Ecuador in 2009. So, on that note, I think I'll brush my teeth and get some sleep. Goodnight!

MARSHA: well, we left cuenca yesterday and went to guayaquil to jessicas. she went to work for a while so we went to a movie. saw wall street. not my favorite, but was ok. just kinda killed time today till our flight which was only 25 minutes long (or a 12 hour bus ride) got to quito and checked in at our hotel that we stayed at last time we were here. walked about 2 blocks to the plaza where all the riots and protests took place a week ago today. the president was there and i thought there would be a lot more military than there was. no action. we just ate the most amazing pasta EVER. have found a lot of ecuadorian food that we really like but was ready for some noodles and sauce. repacked coz we are leaving our big backpacks here in the luggage storage room since we are coming back here in a couple days. off to the bus terminal to try to find our way up to cotacachi which is about 3 hours north of here. reservations for a little cabana at a little farm. who knows??? will find our tomorrow. exciting. hasta manana