Late at night on 4/29 Allan wrote...
Well, we got huge blessings in disguise: Thursday night's "volcano delay" delay from Miami. If we had arrived in Guayaquil Thursday night as planned, we’d have had a terrifying 4+ hour drive to Cuenca that -- if we were lucky -- would have put us at our hotel somewhere around 3-4AM. As it worked out, we flew 1900 miles in about 4 hours, then drove another 4 hours to cover the approximately 80 miles (as the crow flies) to Cuenca, and got in just around dinner time. Quite a ride!
We were up at 5AM to fly at 7AM. Bye Miami.
At Guayaquil we made it through customs with no problems, and began hunting for the van service that claims to run every hour on the hour to Cuenca. We found the shuttle service -- not in the terminal as expected, but instead a taxi ride away. The folks there quickly let us know that they had “no room” today...until 8PM. Waiting around for 8 hours was not on our agenda. So we taxi’d back to the airport to catch a flight to Cuenca.
Surprise - no flights! None of the airlines are flying until Sunday due to the volcanic ash in the air. So finally, it’s back to yet another van service that won’t take Amex Traveler Checks or credit cards, although cash works just fine, thank you. So we paid up and hopped into a very nice, brand new air conditioned van with a pleasant, courteous driver who spoke no English. He filled his tank at a local station for $1.037 per gallon (that’s per gallon, not liter.) Ahhhh, if only...
Leaving the city of Guayaquil showed us a lot of really run down, impoverished areas of the city; not at all pretty. But soon the countryside started rolling by, complete with varieties of trees and plants we’ve never seen, as well as truly gigantic sugar cane and banana plantations. After an hour, maybe 90 minutes, we began the long climb up from the coastal plains into the Andes, heading to their peak and ultimately down the other side into the “valley of flowers” -- as Cuenca was originally called by the ancient Cañari settlers.
About half way up the mountain range we entered a cloud bank that gave the driver no more than 50, maybe 75-feet of visibility. He drove higher and higher, actually leaning his body behind the wheel into sharp corners and curves in the road, passing on the double yellow line even with almost zero forward visibility. It was nerve wracking and I know Becky got pretty tense watching the driver somehow navigate -- not completely recklessly -- but much, much faster than she or I would have driven. At one point we asked how much longer the fog would last. His reply, “about another hour.” OMG.
Rock slides and mudslides caused us to stop and slow down a couple times, but finally we began seeing signs pointing to Cuenca and soon came into this town of some 400,000. Finding the hotel was a problem though because I hadn’t written down the address or phone number, assuming any taxi driver would know where it is. Wrong. Our driver from Guayaquil finally flagged down a local Cuenca taxi driver who led us in a caravan-fashion through the city where -- alas -- we found the Villa Nova Inn.
We settled into our modest room, took leave of it long enough to find a tasty spaghetti dinner, then walked back to the hotel and called it a night.
Well, we got huge blessings in disguise: Thursday night's "volcano delay" delay from Miami. If we had arrived in Guayaquil Thursday night as planned, we’d have had a terrifying 4+ hour drive to Cuenca that -- if we were lucky -- would have put us at our hotel somewhere around 3-4AM. As it worked out, we flew 1900 miles in about 4 hours, then drove another 4 hours to cover the approximately 80 miles (as the crow flies) to Cuenca, and got in just around dinner time. Quite a ride!
At Guayaquil we made it through customs with no problems, and began hunting for the van service that claims to run every hour on the hour to Cuenca. We found the shuttle service -- not in the terminal as expected, but instead a taxi ride away. The folks there quickly let us know that they had “no room” today...until 8PM. Waiting around for 8 hours was not on our agenda. So we taxi’d back to the airport to catch a flight to Cuenca.
Surprise - no flights! None of the airlines are flying until Sunday due to the volcanic ash in the air. So finally, it’s back to yet another van service that won’t take Amex Traveler Checks or credit cards, although cash works just fine, thank you. So we paid up and hopped into a very nice, brand new air conditioned van with a pleasant, courteous driver who spoke no English. He filled his tank at a local station for $1.037 per gallon (that’s per gallon, not liter.) Ahhhh, if only...
Leaving the city of Guayaquil showed us a lot of really run down, impoverished areas of the city; not at all pretty. But soon the countryside started rolling by, complete with varieties of trees and plants we’ve never seen, as well as truly gigantic sugar cane and banana plantations. After an hour, maybe 90 minutes, we began the long climb up from the coastal plains into the Andes, heading to their peak and ultimately down the other side into the “valley of flowers” -- as Cuenca was originally called by the ancient Cañari settlers.
About half way up the mountain range we entered a cloud bank that gave the driver no more than 50, maybe 75-feet of visibility. He drove higher and higher, actually leaning his body behind the wheel into sharp corners and curves in the road, passing on the double yellow line even with almost zero forward visibility. It was nerve wracking and I know Becky got pretty tense watching the driver somehow navigate -- not completely recklessly -- but much, much faster than she or I would have driven. At one point we asked how much longer the fog would last. His reply, “about another hour.” OMG.
Rock slides and mudslides caused us to stop and slow down a couple times, but finally we began seeing signs pointing to Cuenca and soon came into this town of some 400,000. Finding the hotel was a problem though because I hadn’t written down the address or phone number, assuming any taxi driver would know where it is. Wrong. Our driver from Guayaquil finally flagged down a local Cuenca taxi driver who led us in a caravan-fashion through the city where -- alas -- we found the Villa Nova Inn.
We settled into our modest room, took leave of it long enough to find a tasty spaghetti dinner, then walked back to the hotel and called it a night. 
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