9th March 2015 – Tumbes to Cuenca – 2015-03-13 14:15

Tumbes is a pleasant town in the desert close to the Ecuador border. Today we have a 30 minute drive to the Ecuador border and it takes us about 2.5 hours to clear through immigration and customs, with the majority of the time being taken with the temporary import of the vehicles. Once into Ecuador we are driving through lush green rain forest and banana plantations, no more desert! We stop at a roadside stall and Maddy buys a whole branch of lady finger bananas for US$2 and shares them amongst the group. They are beautifully sweet and firm.We stop for morning tea to eat our bananas, overlooking a hydro electricity complex that is being constructed.The banana plantations gradually disappear and we drive through rolling hills of lovely green pastures and lots of cows. We are into cheese and yoghurt making country and it reminds us all of Switzerland, until we drive through a village and catch sight of the locals, particularly the ladies in their lovely skirts. Apparently the trim around the bottom of their skirts identifies them as coming from a particular region, a bit like tartan in Scotland I guess. The road is excellent and has not long been resurfaced. Then we come to road works where they are resurfacing the road and then pat the end on the road works is the original pot holed, very bumpy road which continues to our overnight city of Cuenca. Cuenca is a beautiful city, very clean and the traffic is quiet and very orderly compared to Peru. Our hotel is 1 block from the main square and it is a gorgeous colonial building with antiques and bric a bric everywhere. A lot of the buildings in the immediate vicinity of the square are beautiful with iron balustrade around the balconies. We are back at 2,500 meters above sea level and although we are nearly at the equator it is pleasantly cool, so much more pleasant than the Atacaman desert. First impressions of Ecuador is that it’s a more affluent country than Peru. The houses are a lot larger and they’re finished and there isn’t rubbish everywhere and there aren’t as many dogs wandering the streets as there are in Peru.