The road to Cuenca, not without challenges!

 

A day of collapsed mountains, two road closures and a 6.5 magnitude earthquake!

 

Since we had such a short drive of only 195km, we awarded ourselves a leisurely start at 0900 and set off for Cuenco driving through an enormous banana plantation that stretched for miles and miles. It rained. Chris managed to negotiate a free jetwash off some bemused Ecuadorian road workers at a Peaje and Didier smoothed our way with soldiers, aduana and police with photo selfies. When we got to Pasaje we headed east into the hills and drove up into the mountains. Chris and Ham were behind us so we stopped at a fuel station, filled up, and the kindly attendant enquired where we were off to. When I mentioned Cuenco she shook her head and said 'no, el camino esta cerrado' and indicated the mountain had collapsed further up the hill and there was no way through. Deja vu! So a quick search on GoogleMaps confirmed an alternative route via Puerto Inca and Hierba Buena. Ham and Chris arrived and off back down the mountain we went.

We were in the lee of a mountain and there was no wind and it now started to get very hot! More banana plantations....and..coco plantations for the first time. We came to roadworks, a big queue of very slow moving traffic and infuriating drivers trying to queue barge. We were roasting in the midday sun and stationary.

Suddenly I felt the car start to move and I thought we had been hit by another car. The car was shaking from side to side and then a piece of roof fell off a nearby building. An earthquake! What a very peculiuar sensation to witness everything being vigorously shaken from side to side. Whilst we are all ok, sadly 12 people died in this 6.5 earthquake that covered most of southern Ecuador and northern Peru!

 

After the shake down we took our next mountain road, No 582. As we started our ascent, we were turned around yet again by the police....another collapsed mountain! The trouble is, mountain roads are few and far between and the next detour took us way out of our route, back through Pueto Inca, to La Troncal, Canar and Azogues and finally to Cuenca. In the afternoon our perseverance was rewarded with a spectacular climb up the mountain. Ecuador is very lush with beautiful trees, mountains and rivers.

 

We drove the last hour and a half in darkness and finally arrived, exhausted at 8pm. An 11 hour day, covering 410km and a 3500m pass. Dinner was taken in the excellent Negroni restaurant with terrific views over the city.

Tomorrow is a rest day so we plan to explore this wonderful old city, home to the Ecuador Toquilla hat (otherwise known as the Panama hat).