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Ecuador 2020: Guayaquil, Cuenca, and Quilotoa

From the Galapagos, we flew into Guayaquil and spent a night there. The next day, we took a bus to Cuenca, hung out there for a couple days, then flew to Quito. From Quito, we took a day trip to Quilotoa.

There's a great viewpoint in Cuenca, and I tried to take a panorama, but the weather wasn't great. The resulting panorama is still decent (16MB): https://jsaxton.com/static_images/cuenca.jpg

Other photos from this trip can be found here.

We made it to Guayaquil! They have a boardwalk called the Malecon, which is probably the only safe part of Guayaquil after dark. We walked down to that ferris wheel and got to see a bit of the city. The Malecon during the day. Guayaquil has a massive bus station. Three levels, and bigger than most shopping malls. We took a bus to Cuenca, driving through Cajas National Park. We made it to Cuenca! Cuenca's main square. The city has a very European feel to it and was much more relaxed than the other cities we visited on the mainland. There are still lots of old Spanish colonial buildings. We decided to check out the local market. There were lots of vendors selling deep fried pigs. They call it hornado. Hornado is delicious! Cuenca has several rivers running through it. The view from the Turi viewpoint. Churrasco We attended a free concert offered by the Cuenca Symphony Orchestra. We learned Cuenca has a lot of expats. Mindy was really excited about being able to eat popcorn with lunch. Our tour of Quilotoa started with a trip to the weekly market at Pujili. A fresh empanada! Next, we visited an indigenous family. These guinea pigs are not pets, they're food. Here's the house they show tourists. Fortunately it seemed like they had a second house that was more modern. More guinea pigs! Here we are at Quilotoa Lake, which is located in the crater of an extinct volcano. We hiked down to the bottom. I hiked back up in 40 minutes! Mindy wisely rode a horse back up. On the way back, we visited a canyon. Traffic jam!
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