15 October – Day 85
Banos, Ecuador to Cuenca, Ecuador
Distance: 319kms
Today was really just a driving day. After breakfast in town, we took off to Cuenca through rain, some roadworks, a couple of tolls and a windy road. We made it into Cuenca by late afternoon and Adrian, who was leading the way, stumbled on a pretty nice and very inexpensive hostel with a private garage just for the bikes.
After unpacking, we had a walk around town. We really like Cuenca – much more so than Quito. There’s some very impressive architecture here, including what is possibly the biggest church we’ve seen on the trip so far.
Dinner was in a pub that was playing a soccer world cup qualifying match between Ecuador and Chile. Although Chile won the match 2-1, it was enough to get Ecuador through and they qualified for Brazil… so as you can imagine, the atmosphere was excellent!