10th March 2015 – Cuenca to Patate – 2015-03-13 15:34

Today we have a late start, departing at 10: am for a 330 kilometer drive to our overnight stop at Haceinda Leito just out of a town called Patate. We leave Cuenca and drive through the green hills as it starts to rain lightly, there has to be a reason why it’s so green around here. We drive through little villages noticing that the local women’s outfits are quite different to those in Peru and Bolivia.ÿ Their skirts are quite a bit shorter and no where near as full.A bit further on and the mist rolls in and it becomes very foggy making our progress slow. Although the car in front is only 50 meters away we can’t see their tail lights or the car the fog is so thick. The fog eventually lifts and We manage to find a place to pull off for lunch in a little village.The scenery changes and the hills aren’t as green as this morning, we climb up some very steep roads and down again on an excellent paved road. Navy car starts to splutter & seems to have fuel issues and pulls over only to discover it’s out of petrol, so the reserve supply is put in and we’re off to a service station in the next town. The road winds through steep sided hills with crops and fruit trees growing on them and they’re not terraced, so it must extremely difficult to harvest the crops on the slope. We pass a truck parked at the base of a huge cliff and it is being filled with crops that are growing high up on the hill above. There is a ramp that has been dug into the side and running down the hill that finishes at the top of the truck and there are quite a few men, all barefoot, carrying corn and other crops down to the truck.The valley that our Andes hacienda is very pretty with its patchwork of fields up the slopes of the mountain sides. The Hacienda Leito is lovely with manicured gardens and red bottle brushes lining the driveway.We even have an open fire in our room that the staff light for us, which we are thankful for as it takes the chill off the room.