Cuenca: the city of lost ruins and reservations

Since this blog wont let me upload pictures, please view pics of Quito at:
http://dartmouth.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017932&l=4eb51&id=512844

The weekend after Otavalo, we made our way down south 13 hours to the cultural mecca and former northern inca capital city of Cuenca. The whole gang met up to visit the endless art galleries and cultural museums, listen to the live street music, appreciate the clean streets and colonial architecture, take in the mild climate, enjoy the artisan fairs along the river, and attend the city-wide festivities (such as wooden car racing) with the Ecuadorians. This happened to be the weekend of November 2nd, which is one of the busiest national vacation weekends in Ecuador and also happens to be Cuenca`s festival weekend. Since Kane and I weren`t sure until the last minute that we felt up to taking yet another perilous and uncomfortable overnight bus ride, we missed out on buying tickets for the only bus that went directly from Ibarra to Cuenca. Instead, we had to take our chances on a 3-hour bus to Quito where we would then try to change buses at the zoo-like terminal for an additional 10 hour ride. We knew the odds were against us, that we might not be able to find a bus, and that we might just end up having to come straight back to Ibarra so we packed for all climates and decided to spend the weekend in any city that we could procure a ticket to. On Wednesday night as we dissented from the mountains towards the terminal, our worst fears came true…we saw a terminal completely infested with swarming travelers, everyone desperate to gain passage on the already overcrowded buses. When we go off the bus into the shoulder-crammed terminal we saw that every one of the thirty some companies had posted a sign saying “no more tickets/seats tonight. Do NOT approach the window.” Feeling completely defeated, we heard some locals giving advice that the best bet was to approach the bus drivers directly to try to beg or bargain your way on. Kane and I split up and did exactly that. I literally camped out in front of a bus to Cuenca, put on my best puppy dog face and hoped for the best. Ecuadorian men, with few exceptions, think that American woman, especially blonds, are exotic, beautiful, aggressive, sexually liberated, and more than willing to jump in the sack with anyone who propositions them. Usually I do my best to reverse this stereotype but this was one time I wasn’t going to oppose a little harmless flirting. After a quick chat with the driver, he took pity on me and scoped the bus out for possible vacancies. When he finally convinced one lady with a small child to put the toddler on her lap for the whole trip so I could board, he came back with a smile to see Kane now standing behind me. “So you need 2 seats?”, he said, a little bit annoyed. Yes, we nodded. In the end he let us both board, but kane spent his 12-hour ride switching off between sitting in the aisle on an old, hard, slotted milk crate and laying in the aisle with his Dartmouth hooded sweatshirt pulled up over his head to shield him from stinky feet and the filth of public transportation that surrounded him.

We finally arrived, greeted our fellow volunteers with relief, called 2 hotels to confirm our reservation at each, and sought out to find a bed and bathroom to recuperate from the journey . I know it sounds shady that we had 2 reservations and confirmed them both twice, but in Ecuador the number 1 rule in running a business is “money is everything”. Take the money and run, nothing else matters as long as you get paid, money talks, etc. Rule number 2 for business is “fly by the seat of your pants”. After getting advice from our ecuadorian friends that hotels often conveniently “lose” people’s reservations if a paying customer with cash comes along first, we made 2 reservations and resolved to cancel the other one once we were safe in a room.

Turns out, in Ecuador, you better make 5 reservations if you want to stand a chance. The first hotel told us, “We thought you were with those gringos over there and so we don’t have any more rooms. It’s your fault for looking and sounding like the other gringos that are staying here. Bye. " (WHAT!!???!! You gotta be kidding me!!! We look and sound nothing like that pack of German boys over there!) The next hotel told us that they had given our reservation away the hour before because they assumed that since we were American we wouldn’t have cash and that they didn’t accept credit cards. ( What!!!??!?! Of course we have cash. We simply wanted to hold the room with a credit card to ensure that this wouldn’t happen! Big mistake even mentioning credit cards in ecuador since they are as useful outside quito and guayaquil as that instruction card in an deck full of aces and clubs.)

After the second hotel screwed us despite 2 confirmations and a 3 km outside the city to get to the place, and we knew we had almost no chance of finding a vacancy during a festival/holiday weekend, I just lost it and broke down crying. Kane, usually composed and logical, finally started yelling in rapid Spanish, “This is some mierda (shit)! You call this a business??!? (And best of all) Well, if you don’t have our room then you better start rolling out our cots because we plan on camping out right here on your front lawn since there are no rooms in this entire city." Finally the owner, who had sent his employee out to do his dirty work and tell us the bad news, came out of hiding, offered us a coffee, begged kane to calm down and me to stop my hysterics, and told us in an hour or two he could clean one of the rooms in his own house so we could stay there. We said fine, to call us when it was ready but headed back to the downtown district to try our luck with more run-down hostals not listed in Lonely Planet or the Let's Go guide.

By the grace of god, there was one savvy businesswoman is all of cuenca who followed up on our desperate inquiry. We had left a phone number with her in case of a cancellation after hotel number 1 fell through. And, she actually called us. Finally, after a really rocky start, we had a place to shower and sleep for the remaining 4 days in cuenca.

The rest of the trip was fun, informative and relatively smooth. We shopped for panama hats (the local misnomered specialty in cuenca that go for around $20 here but could fetch a price of $200 to $1,000 in the states), saw an archeological museum with incan ruins and shrunken heads, had a few laughs with fellow volunteers, danced in the streets, had a hot shower and a even got some real coffee. (Despite Ecuador's proximity to Columbian coffee plantations, the entire population is more than content to drink Nestle instant coffee. This is extremely telling of south american exports. Each south american country exports the "cream of the crop" in any given industry to Europe or North American and distributes the leftover product not fit for export to its own population. The same is true of chocolate. A Nestle bar in the US is of far superior quality compared to the ones they distribute here in ecuador. The ecua varieties contain toxicities that in large doses cause brain damage to children. I would assume the same is true of the banana industry. Don't even get me started of the health effects of the commercial flower/rose market. I'll save it for another entry.) Anyway, while I am happy to have experienced the city deemed “the pride and joy” of Ecuador, I have to say that on Sunday afternoon I was pretty happy to be back in Ibarra. We might not have coffeehouses or art museums but my family sure does know how to save my room for me. They usually even turn down the bed.