After the peaceful days in Vilcabamba I continued my journey north to Ecuadors third biggest city calls Cuenca! The city is located in the highlands of Ecuador at 2500 meters above sea-level. According to many travellers Cuenca is the nicest city of Ecuador. It has many churches and other historical buildings, no wonder that the center of the city is on the UNESCO World Heritage Trust list.

I arrived pretty late that day and checked in at hostel El Cafecito, which is near the center and near all the bars and cafe`s. For only 6 US dollars a night I shared a 5 persons dorm, next to the cafe/restaurant of the hostel. It`s crowed until midnight, so sleeping before that time is rather impossible. I met Felicia from Australia, and together with her I went out for a diner at the real Colombian restaurant.. yes kinda strange eating Colombian food in Ecuador, but what the hell, it was good and cheap! After diner we had a few drinks at El Cafecito before I called it a night.

The next day I was checking my email at a internet cafe next door, when suddenly David walked in. He came to Cuenca a little bit later than me and stayed at a different hostel. Together we did a little sightseeing tour, but once you saw one church, you excually saw them all. Cuenca is nice for a day, but not longer! Later that day we met a Irish couple which we saw in Vilcabamba and all together we had diner. Next door from El Cafecito, at a small bar a live band was playing so we went over for some cervezas. The music was fun and I met some more people and also saw Felicia again. That night me, Felicia, Myles from Ireland and Tamara from Australia went out!! Oh man what a night we had in Cuenca. We started our little pub crawl a local cafe with again some live music, followed by a nightclub where we got in for free thanks to Tamara! Normally you had to pay 5 bugs.. anyway, the nightclub wasn`t that big, but the dance floor was just big enough for us to dance on the fast salsa beats. The club closed at three so we moved on to another club where we had to pay a 3 dollar entrance. But at least we where able to dance until 5 in the morning!

Me and Felicia got back to the hostel at half past 5 but talked until 6-ish. So it was a really good night out again.. the only problem was that me and David left for Baños at half past 7! So with only an hour of sleep David came to my hostel and woke me up. Half awake and still a bit drunk I packed my stuff quickly and we got on an 6-7 hour bus to Baños.. felt pretty good during the bus ride :)

Baños

Arriving in Baños we went for the place to be: Hostel Plantas y Blanco. With a nice roof terrace it`s a really good hostel. I went for a quick walk around the town, bought some food, and didn`t do much after diner. I was still sooo tired that I went early to bed. The next day I had chill-day. Doing absolutely nothing! Sometimes it`s just nice to sit arround, do some reading and drinking some Pilsener :) I also met Myles again and so the night started early. Before I knew I was dancing again at one of Baños cafe`s. I also found myself screaming at a karaoke bar :) Oh man it was a good night out again..

The next morning the hot baths were on the program, but having a bad hangover I skipped that. I went for a bicycle ride with two girls I met the day before - Shelly from Papua New-Guinea and Tali from Israel/USA. It was a really fun ride, but it rained too much and by the time we were out of Baños I was totally wet. But we continued until the waterfall del Diablo which was absolutely amazing! At one viewpoint you could even stay under the waterfall seeing tons of water falling down just a meter away from you. Never saw something like that before.

Quilotoa

Back in the hostal we warmed up and had a nice quiet (movie) night :) Because the next day, we got up at 5 to go to the hot baths. Now that`s a nice way to wake up and start the day. We took it easy and arround noon I and the two girls got a bus to go to the Quilotoacrater. So first a bus to Latacunga, and from there with a local (very bad smelling) bus to Quilotoa. The bus ride was amazing, so many wonderful views. Once in Quilotoa we got a hostel for 10 US dollars including breakfast and diner. There are many treks you can do here, but we only made the trek down to the lake which took about 30 minutes. After some relaxing we hiked up again in an hour. And at 1 we took the next bus back to Latacunga and up north to Quito! Well we had a little break in between that, because the original plan was to stay at Cotopaxi. But we couldn`t find a hostel so we had to go Quito.

Check for more photo`s here (no Baños and Quilotoa yet)