Artsy Cuenca

Today is a classic city trip, as I know it: get up early and explore the city on foot. The three of us start with an Americano "para llevar" and make our way into the city. We walk through a beautiful park and cross the Rio Tomebamba over the Mariano Moreno bridge. Cuenca's artistic style, which runs through the whole city, is immediately noticeable. The bridge is inscribed with hundreds of names of women who have died in Cuenca in recent years as a result of femicides, and is a reminder of the city's goal of putting an end to this - this confrontation in the morning is quite touching. We continue walking towards the city center and just let ourselves drift without a plan. Again and again we notice the beautifully painted houses or elaborate mosaics on the facades. The most impressive building is probably the Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepción at Parque Calderón, which towers over the city with its three blue and white domes. We find the artistic heart of Cuenca by chance: In the Centro Municipal Artesanal Arts & Crafts there are many small shops that show and sell their handicrafts. From Panama hats to clothing and jewelry, you can find almost everything here. One artist from Cuenca, whose stand we admire, is particularly touching. We ask if we can take pictures of his work and praise his art - he can't stop being happy. My broken Spanish only tells me that he is so happy and thanks God that we came to his shop. He hugs us warmly, wishes us and our family and friends all the happiness in the world and says goodbye with small gifts of his passion: the painted guitars that have characterized his art for over 50 years. With the panels in our luggage, we now discover the local market hall and the Plaza de los Flores. Again and again we meet others from our group, join in and then separate again. We also visit the Museo Pumapungo, which displays many utensils of the indigenous population. Since the museum hardly offers any English translation, we just stroll through and look for objects that we were able to get to know ourselves from the Kichua family. Then we head back to the city center and find a rooftop bar where we enjoy the view of the cathedral. We also stop at a chocolatería, because this evening we are leaving the land of the cocoa bean. On the way back to the hotel we spend (too much) time in the big supermarket: Supermaxi. It is exciting for all of us to see what is available in other countries. The answer: everything and everything in bags. The supermarket is really huge and left nothing to be desired. What was amusing for us here, however, was that almost everything can be bought in bags: garlic paste, coconut oil, milk, olives, nacho cheese, etc. We stock up on snacks in the Supermaxi for the long bus ride that awaits us later. Before that, we go to a restaurant so that we don't just eat out of bags and then meet up with the group at the hotel. After a short taxi ride, we get on the public night bus, which is supposed to take us to Máncora via a few stops and the Ecuadorian-Peruvian border. The bus is actually quite full, but we can adjust our seats easily, the bus is darkened and so we spend the next few hours here until we reach the border. We leave the bus at 1 a.m. with only our valuables and go into the border authority building: At counter 1, I show my passport and get the stamp for leaving Ecuador and at counter 2, one meter to the right, I get the stamp for entering Peru - it takes less than two minutes. The empty bus and our luggage are briefly sniffed by dogs, then we are allowed to continue our journey. To be continued...