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Ahhh... the adventures begin again. After we left the internet place last night, we went out for dinner - randomly ordering things off the appetizer menu (4 appetizers plus 2 drinks came to $6.20). We learned that humitas is a really tasty, slightly sweet steamed corn dumpling, and that salchipapas, which we've seen on pretty much every menu but have yet to order, is french fries topped with a hot dog. I think that in the future I will stick to the humitas. Had some tasty calimari and a chicken empanada, too. Erika sampled the local wine - it's very, very sweet, and I remember one of the wine tour guides telling us that Peruvians drink very sweet wine, and that they don't drink it with their meals. Watched a rather manic soccer game while eating, during which Erika proved to me that people really do go slightly nuts in the stands at soccer games here (for some reason I only thought it was in Europe that things went awry at soccer games, not sure why). After dinner, decided to head back to the hostel - Cuenca is pretty dead at night during the first half of the week, so not much to do.
Our hostel is on the 6th floor (although technically the 7th, as they don't count the first floor here) of a building that seems to house a whole lot of doctors, as well as someone giving guitar lessons, among other things. There's one big main entry, and then each business has its own door inside. Before we left, I thought it might be prudent to ask what time the door closed, just to be on the safe side. The man at the desk laughed and said never (and Erika heard this, so I'm not imagining it). Well, when we arrived at the front door, around 9:00 pm, it was closed. Not only was it closed, it was locked from both inside and out, and padlocked at the top and the bottom. There was no bell. There was no back entry, as the back of the hostel faces a closed courtyard of a monestary. We figured that there must be another entry, and so circled the block a few times, finding nothing open other than one sketchy, dark hallway, which neither of us were willing to go down. No other signs for the hostel anywhere else on the block. So we tried phoning them, which didn't work, as we weren't aware that, only days before our guidebook went to press, all phone numbers had a 2 added to the front of them, and so the number in the guidebook was useless.
It was dark. There were people sleeping on the sidewalk. We'd passed the same few groups of people multiple times. Between us, we had 2 cameras, one purse, and a guidebook (you know, just so we'd blend in with the locals and not look like prime targets for a hold-up). Erika has assured me that I looked seconds away from tears (as I am want to do in stressful/frustrating/unpleasant situations). In the end, we decided to find another hotel - the first one we tried was full, but the second one had a room. We did feel quite sketchy checking into a hotel at 9:30 at night with no luggage - not even spare clothes. Luckily, the guy at the desk didn't question us.
We had planned a happy evening of getting into our pyjamas, putting on a bit of music, and playing a few games of cribbage, then retiring so that we could get up for a day of exploring. Instead, we got into bed in our little room, without even being able to brush our teeth, and washed a few trashy TV programs before turning in on what were quite possibly the hardest beds I've ever slept on (Erika told me that they were ¨firm¨, to put a better spin on things), slightly bitter and sad about the whole situation. I also have to say I wasn't too happy about the fact that everything was in the other hotel (passports, most of our money, etc).
This morning, we went back to the hotel we tried last night, where the guy who'd been at the desk asked if we'd ever gotten back into our hotel, and looked quite sad when we said no. When we were asking for a room, the woman we were talking to asked where our luggage was, and gave a knowing look when we said it was still at Hostal El Monestario - seems like people have checked out of there before. Anyhow, we have a nice new hotel now, and still have the whole day ahead of us to explore, so hopefully this won't colour our whole visit to Cuenca (although breakfast was spent planning our escape, and dreaming of the towns we'll visit next!).
Next time we write, it will be full of happy and exciting and fun news (because we will find happy, exciting, and fun things to do, even if it does us in).
Love Hil
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