After sending Henry and Kathy back to the Land of Good Beer (aka the good ole’ US of A) we had two weeks before our apartment rental expired. We enjoyed spending time with Rick and Leticia, our friends from California. We shared several good meals and lots of travel stories. We visited a couple more of Cuenca’s microbreweries, but I don’t think any would have measured up to Henry’s high standards.

One day when we came back to our apartment we found that a construction crew had loosened a cable strung across Avenida de Los Americas, a major road running through town. The cable was dangling about 4 feet above the road and brought traffic to a standstill. Normal cars could fit under, but trucks and buses were stopped, with some drivers using brooms or whatever they could find to hold the cable up as they inched under it.

Duck!!

We went with our friend Lainie and some of her friends to another parade in town one night.

Another fun parade with lots of great people watching.

Cuenca has no end of nice street scenes

Walking on air

Looking out onto Cuenca’s new cathedral (the one with the blue domes) from a hillside above town.

For the first time on our trip we are making plans to be sure we don’t overstay our 90-day tourist visa. We have to be out by February 11 to avoid stiff fines, and there’s still quite a bit of the country left to see. Back in December we left Quito and headed to to the coast by way of Mindo, then explored the coast all the way south to Guayaquil before heading inland to Cuenca. That means we have the Panamericana between Quito and Cuenca to explore.

With that in mind, we decided to spend a couple of weeks filling in that gap before coming back to Cuenca to spend a week there sharing an apartment with our friends Justin and Melanie from Rhode Island. That should give us a whole week to make it to Peru! We moved out of our fancy apartment (thanks mom and dad for splitting the cost with us!) and headed out on the road for more adventures.

Lunch stop on our first day back on the road.

An in-auspicious start to a tour that was supposed to include lots of volcano viewing.

We have to stop to explore every train we see.

It took us two days to reach our first destination, the tiny village of Salinas de Guaranda. There are at least three towns by the name of “Salinas” in Ecuador, and this is that last one that Google Maps thinks of. It was visited by an Italian back in the 70s, and he introduced the concept of cooperative agriculture. Today the village makes wonderful artisinal cheeses, salami, and chocolate.

The road to Salinas is dirt and crosses over a 13,000 foot pass. The drive was beautiful.

The town of Salinas.

It was raining when we arrived so we took refuge in a restaurant for lunch. Afterward we visited the chocolate-making factory where we stocked up on 75% yumminess and then bought some salami at a local shop. Unfortunately it being Saturday the factories weren’t operating, but we still got to buy some of the products. It was still raining, so we drove out of town to visit the cheese factory, which was opened by a Swiss man (who better?). In Latin America most of the cheeses available are young and soft. Here they offered a wide selection of cheeses, including a wonderful Emmentaler.

The factory is set on a hill overlooking town, and seemed like a good place to camp. We asked, and they said it was fine. We dined that night on boxed wine, salami, cheese and crackers. It was a fairly cold night at 11,000 feet. The next morning Jen discovered the daily milk delivery in progress. Farmers from the surrounding area brought their milk to sell at the cheese factory. Many used donkeys and even llamas to deliver jugs of milk which were weighed and poured into a giant vat.

We liked not only the taste of the cheese but we also appreciated that we could see that we were directly supporting local people, so we went back in to buy another pound of cheese (for only five dollars) before we left.

The morning milk run.