churches & ruins

It took me a while to get around to writing this post, but I'm finally catching up about last weekend as I head out on another weekend adventure tonight! So, last Thursday night, we headed to Cuenca, a historical and colonial city about a 11-hour overnight bus ride south of Quito.

FRIDAY
We got to Cuenca in the mid-morning, checked into a hostel, and started exploring the city. It's much more tranquila than Quito, and it's filled with churches, cathedrals, and parks. We headed straight for the Chicago Pizza restaurant that was recommended in Lonely Planet, and it was definitely worth it. We spent the afternoon walking around the city, checking out the churches and plazas, and going to Museo del Banco Central, which included a tour of some Incan ruins behind the museum. For dinner, we celebrated our friend's birthday at a Mexican restaurant, which was, of course, delicious.

Church of the Immaculate Conception ("New Cathedral")

Love a good door pic

Iglesia de San Alfonso

Ruinas de Pumapungo (behind the museum)

Out for Mexican!

SATURDAY
After a delicious, slightly American breakfast, we headed out of Cuenca about 2 hours to the Incan ruins at Ingapirca. It's Ecuador's best-preserved archaeological site, and it's pretty cool. You can climb all over the ruins, which we took advantage of, claro, by taking tons of pictures. We headed back to our hostel in the afternoon, napped, and ate at a crepes place across the street for dinner.

Group pic at the ruins

Our attempt at a jumping picture

One of the coolest parts of the day was meeting another Tarheel on the bus on the way to the ruins! Her name is Natalia, she's a junior like me, and she took the year off to travel around South America. She was living in Cuenca at the time and worked at the crepe place where we ended up eating dinner!

UNC all over the world!

SUNDAY
After sleeping in, we had another pretty good breakfast and then walked around the city a little bit. After a big debacle at the bus station, we (illegally) took a bus about an hour away to Parque Nacional Cajas, a huge park known for its thousands of beautiful lakes. It was pretty chilly and started to sprinkle as we were leaving, but it definitely valió la pena! (one of our favorite Spanish phrases - means it was worth it) We headed back to Cuenca, walked along the Río Tomebamba, and ate our last dinner back at the Chicago Pizza restaurant. Then we took yet another night bus back to Quito!

Group pic (minus Alice Ann) at Cajas

The TOMS were excellent hiking shoes

Laguna Llaviucu at Cajas