The next day I went in search of the English couple, Niall and Anna, who had also just arrived in Cuenca. I soon discovered them down by the river, transferred to their hotel and slept a little.
After surviving on sugar for all of Trek de Condhor and then having a few sleepless, coffee-fueled days after that my body finally threw in the towel and permitted several malicious afflictions to attack me at once. To name them would only serve to give them more power; but suffice to say I had to seriously reduce my triple bottom line (Chocolate, Coffee, Sugar) intake. This was difficult in the artsy touristness of Cuenca where there were several gourmet chocolate places and cafes.
However I did explore the old town seeing beautiful architecture and experiencing the lively and vibrant atmosphere. I savored several Ecuadorian specialties like yogurt with pan de yuca, encebollado (tasty fish & onion soup) and morocho (hot & thick spiced milk and corn drink). In one street I saw a whole bunch of folk screaming and fleeing into the streets which I thought was the aftermath of an Ecuadorian `running of the bulls`. The reality was actually quite boring really, just your regular, run-of-the-mill day for the riot police suppressing people`s voices, rights and this transport workers protest. I`m getting pretty used to this type of thing (took some great photos too - thanks for the tip, Dad).
The next day along with Niall and Anna I organised our food for the trek, then I tried to send a parcel to England and amongst other things walked around in a painful, disbelieving haze of withdrawal symptoms. This manifested in a dummy-spit at the staff of our hostel for late, loud music, but to their credit they responded reasonably. I also failed to pack very well at all and generally hated life.
The next day we all combined to manage a tricky public transport mission to the Cajas National Park office where we discovered the special foreigners price of $10 (Ecuadorians - $1.50) entry plus $4 each per night camping - for what? They don`t maintain anything, there are no camping facilities, they just sit on their ·$%& arses all day collecting the gringo bucks. Yes, these were the real Ecuadorian capitalist pigs. So we paid for a night`s camping which we fully intended to comply with.... naaaht.
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