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The Peru-Ecuador border crossing was described to us by many people as 'the most dangerous in South America', because of people being robbed and suchlike going across the border I guess. However, since pretty much everything is the most dangerous something in South America we didn't really take heed to this warning other than to get the direct bus to Cuenca which only stopped at the border for you to get your passport stamped, rather than the one that you have to wait for two hours at the border then get another bus, and nothing at all happened to us apart from my dodgy looking UK passport being examined for half and hour on the Ecuador side before he stamped it! The others only took about 5 minutes, I don't know why!
Cuenca did not turn out to be the 'city of cats' as Alex had promised us (apparently his friend had told him there were cats everywhere!) In fact we didn't see a single cat so I think the name 'city of unusually few cats' would have been more appropriate! Anyway it was a city of many cool churches, and a massive house fire on the road we were eating one night, no idea how it started becasue it wasn't there when we walked past to the restaurant, but I hope the people were alright because it was pretty bad!
On the Sunday we went to the 3 villages surrounding Cuenca famous for their Sunday markets,Gualaceo, Chordeleg and Sig Sig. The villages were cute and had a lot of character, and a nice river runnig through the first, and cool views of the mountains and valleys as we drove between each one. However, we should have arrived in the morning if we wanted to see the artisan market and the panama hat market and basically anything other than a food market at each one, our bad! But we did get to ride on the back of the bus/taxi pickup trucks that served the villages which was COOL! We also attempted to visit the panama hat factory/museum in one of the villages after being told about it by some locals. We stopped to ask for directions MANY times and each time confirmed with the people that the factory would definately be open given that it was a Sunday, and each time they replied that of course it was open, it was ALWAYS open! Needless to say it wasn't open when we arrived!
We also visited Cajas national park, just outside of Cuenca, and did a walk round one of the lakes, clearly not sticking to the trail as we kept hitting dead ends on top of rocks where the only two ways were back where we'd come from or jumping down to sudden death! The park was beautiful, but Alex and Jeffrey were not impressed as they said it looked just like Switzerland, and it was freeezing cold as well because it was so high up, so we made it a relatively short walk!
Our next stop Puerto Lopez was really cool. I only really went there because the other guys wanted to do whale watching there, which I was dubious about as I'd done it in Australia before and just remembered it as hours of sitting on a boat being bored, for a second glimpse of a whale's tale miles away, but it was actually AWESOME! The whales were SO close to us, and they were enormous, humpback whales, swimming from one side to another under the boat. One baby whale was even doing tricks for us and jumping up in the air doing 360's! That was definately the highlight of the last few days, and we spent the rest of the time in Puerto Lopez playing beach volleyball and chilling out. The beach was actually pretty decent apart from the fact it was a port so had a lot of boats and a bad smell! But the fishing boats and all the pelicans swarming around to get to the fish made a good atmosphere, and of course the seafood was great!!
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