We took an afternoon bus from Banos to Cuenca, which is suppose to be a lovely colonial white city. We left in the afternoon and it was about a 6 hour journey. So by the time we get there, it could be dark and we might not get to see anything. We are only stopping here one night to break up the long journey to get to Peru. The bus journey took us around 6 hours and by the time we got to Cuenca, it was nearly dark, so we won't get to see much of the place tonight, never mind. We've seen plenty of cities now, so won´t miss out on much. We got a taxi from the bus terminal to the hostel, as it was too far to walk. Apparently Cuenca is the 3rd largest city in Ecuador, which I didn't know about until we got here.

Once we'd got dropped off at the hostel, we checked in. It's not the greatest hostel we've been to, but for an overnight stopover, it will do us. The location was quite far out from anything so we had to walk further to go anywhere. After we checked in our things, we went to find a cash point and to get some food. Now with all the trouble we've been having in Ecuador withdrawing money, I didn't think we'd be able to just draw out money from the first bank we see. There is one close to the hostel, so we tried that one, but no it didn't work, so we'll have to carry on walking around the city to find one that will work. In the meantime, we were starving, so decided to get some food, on the recommendation of the guy at the hostel, we ate at some local restaurant. It's a place you wouldn't even know about unless you were told, as you have to ring the bell to be let inside the restaurant. Once inside, we sat down to eat. We saw them cooking 'cuy' or Guinea Pig to us, there were a few of them roasting on a spit. I asked John if he was going to try it, and he said perhaps, but the price here was around $60 so definitely not here, maybe when we get down to Peru! We just ordered off the normal menu, John had his steak and eggs, and I had my chicken. The food was quite nice, but it wasn't cheap. We need to start cutting back on eating fancy meals out all the time, as that's where a big chunk of our budget is going!

After dinner, we carried on walking to find as many cash points as we could, trying each one, unsuccessfully. Looking on the map the hostel had given us, we decided to walk to the main plaza as there should be some banks around there. We walked past some lovely buildings, they are white and some of the architecture was really good. It was just a shame we are only getting to see this city at night, as it seems like a nice city. We found another cash point near the plaza that actually worked, so drew out some money and headed back to the hostel to get an early night as our bus leaves at around 7am tomorrow. No pictures here as it was too dark to take any nice pictures.