South America, Days 74 to 81 - Stage 17: Cuenca, Ecuador

She complained I hadn't put many photos of the dogs on the last blog, so I'll start with one of Jackie getting full attention from all three while she eats a cake. They didn't get any (in case you're reading this Cheryl), but they certainly wanted some

Day 74-81 Sunday-Sunday

We really haven’t done much worth writing about, we’ve cooked, and eaten ‘normal’ food which is one of the joys of sitting, and having a kitchen. A washing machine being the other domestic simple pleasure. I’ve read 2.5 of Cheryl’s books and we’ve loved and fussed the dogs. This is all sounding like the last blog of the sit, which it isn’t, we don’t leave until a week on Tuesday, which in housesitting terms is a long time, but it’s going by so quickly.

Little Darla dog is the cutest and all she wants is to be close to Jackie. If she sits down, Darla wants to be picked up to sit on her lap and will moan until she's there. She can't get up on her own as her little legs are too short to leap up. Once there she's no trouble, she just lies there

We went on another little walk, to the hill opposite. Brian loves to be able to look around and say “been there, been there, been there” so it had to be done (see our Relive video with photos: click here). It is a strange looking hill as it appears to be completely flat on the top, so you really think it should be an airport. Indeed, it has the radar and at night very bright flashing lights for airplanes coming into Cuenca, just a little bit further west. It is however quite down and up to get there, so we ordered a taxi. After a little confusion about where we wanted to go we arrived at the (closed) restaurant Brian had navigated by. At this point we discovered that neither Brian, or the taxi driver had mobile coverage. This obviously presented us with the problem of how do we call to get back. He didn’t want to go away and come back, as we said we didn’t want to be much over an hour and a half, and it was a good 20 minutes to get there. He said he’d get the company to send someone else for us at 12.00, I think, and we were ok with this, however after a bit more Spanglish chat he said he would stay the hour and a half. He actually then took us quite a lot higher, to the edge of the plateau, without which we would never have achieved what we wanted to in an hour and a half, so definitely for the best. It was an easy walk as it was pretty much flat, but interesting non the less as we covered nearly 7km. He stopped for sugarcane juice on the way down, which made me feel much less guilty about asking him to stop for bread for our lunch. A good little outing despite there being something slightly galling about paying $20 to do a walk!

Took this one this morning. Asia dog lying across Darla, who doesn't seem to mind

Azamara cruises (who we're doing the Antarctic trip with) don’t really have formal nights (thank goodness, as I haven’t got any sparkly tops with me, unsurprisingly), but they do have a ‘white night’ which also unsurprisingly doesn’t feature highly in our luggage. We visited the second hand shop on the way out of the village that we passed on our canyon walk where I managed to pick up a white and black shirt for £5. Hurrah, just need to get similar for Brian, and if I can get a pair of trousers or a skirt, so much the better. If not, it’ll be black trousers!

The target of our next walk, that hill over there that looks relatively flat. If you zoom in you might see a radar on the top right and there's a couple of bright flashing lights we can see from the garden at night. Planes (of which there seem to be very few) come in from the right, go over the hill and land at Cuenca airport which is off on the left a few miles away. This is the highest point on their approach, hence the lights and radar. This photo is just up from the house we are staying in and when I see hills like that I just want to get up on the top, so I can look back later and say, 'been there'. Is it just me or do other people think the same?

There has also still been much planning. Brian has organised us a trip on the Falklands, assuming we manage to land. It is a tender port so if the weather is too much it is quite likely to get missed out. Azamara has loads of trips there, but none seemed to combine history with a penguin or two, and we wanted everything. He said it would be cheaper if it was for 4 so I posted on the cruise Facebook page and have found an English couple who were very interested. We’ve had a little chat and she sounds very nice, so that’s sorted. Strangely their cabin is directly opposite ours, what are the chances? And will it be too much of a good thing? At the moment, it’s all working well, I’ve managed to tell them exactly where the ship will dock and she has said she can bring out some seasickness pills for us if necessary. We like that sort of give and take.

We caught a taxi up, its about 8km from the house with a lot of ascent. He drove up the road you can see snaking up and parked at the little building on the right and waited while we walked. We walked a lot faster than normal (at 3000m) as we had a time pressure and we (I) wanted to do the whole plateau

We have also booked our return to the UK. I realised our last insured week was actually Easter week so booking things would be harder so we were going to fly home before that, only then I found another cruise, that actually goes from Rio, our last place, to Southampton. How good is that? Brilliant, except there were no cabins left for Rio to Southampton. There was however a cabin Buenos Aires (further south) to Rotterdam (further north). They’ve made the calls, we can get on late and off early, so that’s what we are doing. Does it make any sense? Not to me, but whatever, we’ll be back in the U.K. on April 25th.

It was pretty flat up there, just the odd hill, but the views were amazing

We’ve fitted in the Galapagos between here and the cruise round the southern tip. We’ve got a week in Buenos Aires when we disembark in a hotel that includes Argentine tango lessons. We’ve then got a trip to Easter island, which all means there is only about a month left. It’s all planned, in his head (and on a spreadsheet) so might as well get it booked. We are never this organised! Have a look at our updated map of our complete trip and a description by clicking the map on the right of this blog and a description of our complete trip above it (click the photo of Jackie standing in front of Machu Picchu above the map and it opens up a new page).

We must obviously be able to see the house we're staying in as we can see the hill, but pinpointing it was very difficult. I took loads of zoomed in photos thinking 'there it is' but actually didn't find it. This is one of those pictures, it's probably near to where we are staying, but it isn't in this!

Panorama from the top looking towards Cuenca in the far distance to the right

And there, zoomed in, is Cuenca airport, right in the middle of the city

Who's he? Well, I think its a Peruvian Meadowlark. He's obviously quite heavy, look how he's bent that branch!

This is the highest point of Pachamama hill, there's a cross, a wind turbine and a ruined building

At the cross (there's two there ha-ha!)

And by the wind turbine

Next stop was to get as close to the radar station as we could without getting into trouble. It's over there...

On the way we had to stop for a lizzard Jackie spotted in the grass. Can you see him, he's very well camoflaged 

There's the radar station over there. We walked through an open gate which didn't have any 'No Entry' notices on, but Jackie was getting twitchy. There's a car parked by the building on the left and then I started to wonder if its illegal to take photos of sensitive sites

There's one of the flashing light arrays there. We decided we'd pushed our luck as far as we could so beat a hasty retreat hoping no-one would come after us

A final detour to another viewpoint which Jackie didn't think we had time to get to

But we did, enjoyed the view and then headed back to the car, arriving 1 minute earlier than we said we would!

On the way back Jackie spotted a friend. There's always time to say hello

Always willing to try different things (and me being in charge of chopping up fruit for breakfast) we decided to try dragon fruit. Here it is

We bought a string of five of them (we'd had one by the time I took this photo) for 99 cents. Got to be worth a go at that price even if we don't like them

You cut them in half like I've done here and scoop out the flesh with a spoon. Other people had described it as tasting like a cross between a kiwi fruit and a pear, slightly sweet and we kind of agree with that. You eat the black seeds which you don't really notice, they aren't unpleasant

Here it is, scooped out (I got better at scooping as I went on and managed to get it our whole, chopping it into segments)

And there it is mixed with other fruits for our breakfast. We've got watermelon (also very cheap here), banana, apple and blueberries, what a great way to start the day!

I know this will be of no interest to most people, but the road up to the house has been closed all the while we've been here, resulting in a big detour for cars, but we can still walk along it as pedestrians. They are finally laying the concrete in four widths to make the full road and here they are doing the second strip. The pavements either side had been done previously. The man in the yellow jacket looking at me was asking if I'd like to help levelling the concrete. Everyone here is so friendly even if we struggle to understand, it's a lovely atmosphere

Eventually it'll look like this. I took this just as I started my run this morning. Yes, I've done another one, you can see it here. I acually managed 5km today and felt reasonable at the end of it. However, 35 minutes will not break any records, however at 2500m and with 140m of ascent it's not bad

So back to the house and sleeping doglets, a familiar sight. One final week and a bit of relaxation