Cuenca, Ecuador

Anticipating the usual food vendors on the 7am bus to Cuenca, I hadn't bothered to stop at a store and pick up breakfast for the ride. Unfortunately, and this is the only context with which I would say this is unfortunate, my bus was direct, and didn't pick up random people carrying bags of oranges or baskets of unidentifiable meat off the side of the highway. So instead, when we stopped in Riobamba (at least I think we were in Riobamba) to change buses, I bought the only familiar food I could find - a package of ritz crackers and a single serving portion of nutella. This doesn't sound like a terribly nutritious breakfast, but it cost 50 cents and the other options were egg soup with a side of unidentifiable yellow drink (the yellow was sort of a yellow green hue, yum) or giant hanging pig.

 
Other than the food situation, the bus far exceeded my expectations. We arrived an hour early to Riobamba. Then, the guy who worked for the first bus personally led me to the next bus, without even being asked, probably sure I would struggle to figure it out on my own by looking at my confused expression when he rapidly reeled off a set of 50 instructions for how to who knows what. And the bus was super empty! 9 hours and $10 later, I happily arrived in Cuenca.

Cuenca is a beautiful, historic city teeming with churches, museums, cheap jewelry stores, and hair salons. I only walked around briefly, mostly to find dinner, because it started to downpour only minutes after I left the hostel. Atleast it is pretty warm here, so the rain isn't miserable! I am spending the night at Alternative hostel, which is very clean and very pretty, but the street it is on is super loud. I think I will change hostels in the morning.

Finished Gone Girl, started The Lowland.

Ohhhh, I forgot to mention a hilarious mistake I made the other day when expressing my frustration that many streets had the same name, but didn't seem to connect. Una Via street. I later found out what una via means (one way) and was utterly embarrassed. Turns out the streets aren't so tricky after all.