Cuenca Highlights

We have 4 fulll days here in this lovely colonial city.  It’s loud and bustling but right sized. It feels really safe and walking at night isn’t a problem. I’ve heard there are 10,000 expats from the US and Canada here in Cuenca, but we haven’t really seen any.  The clerk at our hotel said the influx caused real estate prices  to skyrocket but now there are more good restaurants. 

And there is great food here.  Most places offer an almuerzo, a set lunch of soup, meat, rice, vegetables, and a drink for $2. That’s an incredible deal and fills us up for the whole afternoon.  Eating in the markets is our favorite, stall after stall of crazy good food. We like to share a dish at 2 or 3 places to get a good variety. 

We’ve had a lovely time walking around visiting churches and museums. Along with the traditional museums showcasing pottery shards, shrunken heads from Amazonian people’s, and life sized dioramas, we went to Museo de Arte Prohibido.  Basically a goth fest.

The owner suggested we check out the bathroom for its artistic details.

It was weird and fun.  And then Maya said “this is the kind of place that turns into a sex dungeon at night”.  Well, I had to agree.

Back at the market, underneath the stairs, there are traditional healers offering a Limpia for $3.  This is a spiritual practice, passed down through generations from mother to daughter. The client is lightly beaten with a bouquet of herbs and flowers, then an uncracked egg is vigorously rubbed all over the body, and finally the practitioner drinks some kind of herbal concoction and spits it out in a mist on your head and on your back. The egg is cracked into a bowl and your energy is read from it. Unfortunately, I could not understand anything the woman was saying about what the egg was revealing about Mayas energy. The debris from the bouquet  on the floor represents all the bits of negative energy that has been beaten out of the client.

Another unique experience in Quenca is to go to a spa. Piedras del Agua is about 20 minutes by taxi outside of town. If you look on their website they tell you which nights you can get a two for one deal on the spa circuit. We had a Turkish steam bath, a red mud bath, a blue mud bath, subterranean contrast pools (One hot and one cold), and a steam box. Followed by two swimming pools,one of them a Japanese Onsen pool. All of this for $17 each, what a bargain! We left exfoliated and relaxed.

We got back into town and had a lovely plate of chicken, rice, and salad for $3.50 what a bargain.