Cuenca

Day 115 (October 21, 2018) – Cuenca, Ecuador

Cuenca is by far the most stunning city we've encountered in Ecuador. The grandiose architecture is unlike anywhere else we've seen in the country. 

Rio Tomebamba, which divides the modern from the historical sections of town.

The main area of the city is divided by a river. On one side of the river is the more modern part of town where there is a main street populated by restaurants, bars, and small stores. This is where we stayed in an Airbnb apartment for a week, in a residential section near a university. On the other side of the river is the historic downtown area, which is laid out in a grid with streets lined with ornate Spanish colonial buildings, many flying Ecuador’s flags from their second story verandas.

A sampling of some of the architecture in Cuenca. The square was a bit under construction, but still looked pretty.

Parque San Sebastian.

Half the fun of the city comes from simply walking around, visiting lavish churches, exploring the restaurant scene, and enjoying the beautiful weather. Like almost every city in Ecuador, Cuenca is surrounded by a bowl of mountains that creates a beautiful setting to enjoy the sunset every night. 

The sunsets were amazing. I had no idea the sky could be so purple.

We found some surprisingly good restaurants around town and, of course, found our favorite craft beer bar to hang out at before dinner. We found Cuenca to be very affordable. Just about every restaurant in town has a fixed menu of the day for lunch. For $2-4 you can get a soup, entrée, desert, and fruit juice. It’s plenty filling for lunch. Dinner tended to be more expensive, but there was an international variety of restaurants to choose from. Oddly enough, we found perhaps the best Indian food on the trip so far from one of the restaurants in Cuenca. It was so good we even returned a second time.

There are even some Incan ruins in town. This was taken from the top of the ruins, overlooking some of the city skyline. The ruins themselves were somewhat less impressive than this view.

While there are a variety of attractions in and around Cuenca, most of our time there was spent attending another week of Spanish classes. We each had three hours of private lessons in the morning from the Yanapuma Spanish School. We were both very impressed with the quality of the teachers and the school. It was a much smaller school than the one we attended in Guatemala so while there were fewer opportunities for social interaction with other students, the school more than made up for that by feeling very intimate and extremely welcoming. Both our teachers were phenomenal, and I think we both left feeling more confident in our communication abilities and knowing much more than when we started.

Waiting for Spanish school to start one morning.

We could have easily spent more than a week in Cuenca. It’s a beautiful city that is more fun than most to explore. In fact, I was wishing that we had time for a second week of Spanish classes after the first week had gone so well, but we had already booked onward travel arrangements that we had to stick with. Cuenca was our last stop in Ecuador during our month-long visit and we had to continue onward to Perú!