Cuenca, Ecuador, South America

I had an awesome day hiking around Parque Nacional Cajas today. I got a local bus over to the south bus terminal in Cuenca, and then took the Occidental bus out to Cajas. I got off the bus at Toreadora which is one of the main places to start a hike in Cajas. It was a bit unclear where to start when I got there, but luckily the guy working in the cafe was able to give me some advice on where I should go for a walk. He said there are two routes I could take, but he recommended I take route two because you get a better view from the top of the mountain.

I took his advice, but what I didn’t realize that the difficulty of this hike was High. I definitely should not have gone on this hike by myself. There were a few different points where it was too dangerous to be on my own, and if I had gotten hurt, I would have been on my own, and in big trouble. It was a great hike though, and the view from the top of the mountain was pretty spectacular. Cajas is known for having a lot of lagoons, or little ponds, so it was pretty cool to see from the top. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t as nice as I was hoping it would be, but it wasn’t raining, so it was good enough.

The whole hike took about 2.5 hours, but at the end of the hike I saw the sign showing the information on route two, and it said it was a four hour hike, with difficulty level of high. It also surprised me to see the highest point on route two was 4,267m (14,000ft). No wonder I was so out of breath when I was climbing the mountain! I think that’s the highest I’ve ever hiked. It felt good to conquer it though.

I finished the hike and grabbed a bite to eat in the cafe at the base. I had to go out to the main road and flag down a bus that was coming by to get back to Cuenca. All of the busses on this route would be going the same way, so I only had to wait about 20 minutes to find a bus going my way. Three spanish people hopped on the same bus and we all had to stand for the ride back to Cuenca. It was about an hour away and it’s a really windy road up through the mountains, so it was quite the adventure just trying to stand up on the bus after my legs already felt like jelly.

I made it back to Cuenca around 5:30pm and have just chilled at the hostel for the night. I’m absolutely exhausted after the day of hiking and traveling, so it feels good to just chill tonight. I’m meeting up with Andrea tomorrow to check out a little town or two outside of Cuenca, so that should be fun.