Thursday, April 13, 2006

The earliest bus out of Alausi for Cuenca leaves at 7:30. We felt no need to rush out that early, but the 9:30 bus was very attractive to us. Of course we dawdled. We wouldn't be us if we didn't. But at 9:20 we were packed and ready to go. It turned out Michael and I had different feelings about things. He felt we had somehow organically changed plans and would be taking a later bus. I felt we had somehow organically decided to skip breakfast, quickly walk the half-block to the bus and get the heck out of town.

In the end we decided to walk to the bus with our things and leave if we could. Michael wanted breakfast, but I had no desire to enter any of Alausí's restaurants again. As a compromise, we stopped at a bakery and got a couple of panes de queso for the trip.

The bus was waiting, looking very full. Too full. We were just turning away, extremely reluctantly on my part, when the ayudante buttonholed us to tell us that there would be seats opening up in Chunchi. And how long until Chunchi? Half an hour, he said. Michael and I looked at each other and shrugged. I think he was afraid I'd have a fit if we didn't leave, and he may well have been right. So we stowed our bags and got on the crowded bus.

Some gringa with a ridiculous looking shawl on her head was blocking the aisle about two-thirds back, so those of us standing in the front of the bus were pretty uncomfortable. "They shouldn't sell tickets when the bus is already full," tsked another gringa, with a wide-eyed, earnest, "silly developing countrypeople" expression.

Which turned me 180 degrees from being irritated at everyone in Alausí to being irritated at all the foreigners, especially the tsker, who didn't speak enough Spanish to understand the ayudante's simple statement about Chunchi until Michael translated for her, and the aisle-blocker with the weird fashion sense.

The bus companies are pretty much damned if they do and damned if they don't on the ticket issue. If they didn't sell standing room tickets, the next gringo down the pike would be all over them with, "Come on, just sell me a ticket, I can stand no problem - you should see the busses in Guatemala!" Not to mention the people who actually live here trying to get on with their lives. Someone's always going to be complaining. At least selling as many tickets as possible makes them more money.

It was hot. There was no air conditioning. Every single window was closed. That gross filmy layer of sweat formed on my skin, made worse by the fact that I had chosen not to use the Alausí hotel's icky shower. There was no room to place my feet comfortably.

So I stood there feeling scornful and dismissive of the complainers, but also grudgingly appreciating their point of view because I wanted to sit down, or at least have more room to stand comfortably. It really has been quite a while since we've ridden such a crowded bus. What I could see of the view was spectacular, deep green valleys and high green hills draped with tendrils of white fog. The fog drifted in and out, sometimes obscuring the view completely, and sometimes dissolving into nothing so the green popped back out.

When ten o'clock neared I cheered up a bit. At any moment we would be in Chunchi and seats would open up for us, and maybe we could even open a window and get some freaking air. At ten thirty I was thinking Bad Thoughts about the ayudante. But about five minutes later, we finally stopped to let people out. Not the masses that I had naively assumed the ayudante was implying, but a few. Michael and I were two of about five people standing. But I felt cheered, now that I at least had room to stand comfortably.

I stood in the local way - leaning my back against the side of someone's seatback and relaxing. There was lots of peoplewatching to do. The bus was full of indigenous families; the ladies in their fedoras particularly interested me. In front of me was a little family - man, woman and child. The man had the window seat and was reading the newspaper with his legs stretched out freely. The woman had a huge leather purse on her lap, a large bundle of something under her legs, and a small girl with windburned cheeks leaning on her.

As we snaked along the winding roads, the little girl got more and more sleepy. Eventually another woman from across the aisle, who had a baby wrapped in so many blankets that I could barely see him, helped the little girl to sit down on the bundle. The saga of this tired little girl was a long one. I will skip the details, but eventually she was lying on the muddy aisle floor with her head resting on the bundle under her mother's legs. The father continued to read the paper.

After an hour and forty-five minutes, we got seats. It was a real relief to sit, and to open our window. People near us opened windows too, but only when the bus was stopped. As soon as it started up again, all the windows closed but ours. But all was right in the world for me as I sat eating my pan de queso. (Michael had long since eaten his while we were standing.) And to our happy surprise, we arrived in Cuenca after only three hours, when our guidebook had claimed five.

Cuenca looked nice right away. We were somewhat worried that we wouldn't be able to find a room since it's Semana Santa, but our fears were unfounded. We found a room at the first place we looked, Hostel Monestario. The LP describes it as a "six-floor gem" but I would think it's more accurate to say the hostel is "a gem on the top floor of a six-story building full of dentists' and lawyers' offices. Oh and by the way the elevator is perpetually out of service."

By the time we huffed up all those stairs with our stuff, we pretty much knew we were going to stay there if the room was decent. Which it was. At $15 per night, it's couple of dollars more than we would have liked, but it has cable TV, bathroom, and lots of light. The hostel also has a kitchen and a balcony overlooking the market. We sat out on the balcony while our room was being made up, admiring the lovely view.

That's when we saw the knife fight. At six floors below the urgency of the fight was as muted as the voices of the fighters, but Michael said later it was a really-truly street brawl. One of the guys confronted the other one and there was some arguing. The first guy ran to a food stall and grabbed a kitchen knife. The other one already had his knife, I guess, and then they just went at it. Two of the hostel staff came running out to watch. The fight broke up fairly quickly, with one guy walking off bloody but fine.

Other than that, Cuenca is just as sweet as can be. Colonial, with those red tile roofs and narrow colonial streets. I'm not fond of the narrow streets to walk on because there's never enough room and you can't hold a proper conversation, but they are nice to look at. This afternoon we walked down to the river and it's just the prettiest little river you can imagine, shallow and splashy, the color of very old jade, with thick green grass growing up the banks.

So far, except for the knife fight, Cuenca is looking pretty good.

HOURS ON THE BUS: 239.25

 

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Hostal Monestario, Cuenca.

View of the market from Hostel Monastario, Cuenca.

Iglesia de San Francisco, view from Hostal Monestario, Cuenca.

Cafe Austria, Cuenca. Where the good coffee lives.

Flower market, Cuenca.