Day 8: Cuenca We started our day with packing our belongings and eating breakfast. Next it was time for a long bus ride to our next destination, the mangrove forest. When we arrived at the visitor center before arriving at the forest, we saw a two toed sloth and her baby! They were so cute! I have always wanted to see a sloth and I finally was able to. Once we officially arrived at the forests, we were instructed to put on our handy dandy bug suits and spray ourselves with bug spray to protect us from the swarms of mosquitos. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many mosquitos at once before. I was very nervous to be bitten by a mosquito since I had not been taking my malaria prevention medication. Luckily, I was not bitten as much as my fellow classmates.
The toe-toed sloth and her baby (Photo taken by Greg Fischer)
The extra long canoe
We began our tour with a walk on a wooden bridge trail to the mangrove forest. Here we spotted crabs crawling in and out of their homes. Diego informed us that fishermen and other workers would reach into the crab holes and capture the crabs by hand. I found that to be very interesting since we use physical traps to capture crabs and not our hands. Once we were finished our walk on the bridge, we boarded two long canoe like boats. On our boat tour, we saw a variety of birds including the Roseate Spoonbill, Cocoi Heron, and Green Kingfisher. The group on the other boat even saw a pair of alligator eyes on the top of the water surface, unfortunately our group did not see them.
Roseate Spoonbill (Photo taken by Greg Fischer)
We toured the mangroves for about an hour before we headed back. Our next destination was the shrimp farms. We learned that when the shrimp are right size for harvesting, the farmers will employ guards to stand guard at night to watch for thief's. Thief’s will steal shrimp in the middle of the night and sell the shrimp for their own profit. Depending on the size of the shrimp, one pound of shrimp could cost $2 to $3 dollars. The farms typically have five pools containing 5,000 pounds of shrimp per hectare. Farmers will harvest the shrimp only when the demand for shrimp are high. Our shrimp farm tour ended and we headed for the beautiful Cajas!
Beautiful Cajas
While visiting Parque Nacional Cajas, we ascended to an elevation above 14,000 feet. A lot of my classmates began to feel symptoms of the quick altitude change, myself included. I felt slight dizziness and at times my heart rate increased but I was not going to let that stop me from hiking Cajas and missing such a beautiful sight. Once I settled my heart rate, I was good to go. While hiking, we learned about the variety of plants found in Cajas and the different medicinal properties they offer.
Indian Paintbrush
Indian paintbrush is used as a tea to regulate women’s menstrual cycle. Women drink the tea for up to 9 to 40 days for regulation to take place. Unusually, the red portion are the leaves and green portions are the flowers.
Donkeys Ear
Donkeys ear is cooked with milk and used to sooth throat problems.
Deer horn
Deer horn has sulfur properties is used in a tea to help with skin issues.
Beautiful Cajas
Once we finished our hike of Cajas, we boarded the bus once again and continued our drive to Cuenca where we checked into the beautiful Victoria Hotel. A view classmates began experiencing heightened altitude sickness symptoms that caused another unfortunate hospital visit. While our classmate checked into the hospital the remaining of us visited the home of Tait’s colleague, Paul. He cooked the group a delicious dinner and we discussed his experiences of retiring and moving to Ecuador. He provided the group with a few facts about life in Ecuador. First, in order to get an Ecuadorian license you have to take a 20 question test in Spanish. There are also two ways to get your license. You can have your driving history from the U.S sent to Ecuador or you can attend driving school. An expat can also keep their US license. Second, there’s a lot more American, Chinese and Indian themed restaurants that have started to open up in Cuenca. Third, road markets are very cheap but the food quality is not always good quality (cheap food from subsidies). The most interesting fact we learned is that all Ecuadorians are required to vote. If they don’t vote they are fined $100 but if an individual is in another providence at the time of election they need to obtain proof of travel and are only fined $42. They have one year to pay the fine, if not they will lose their permanent residency in Ecuador. Other small facts we learned about life in Ecuador are that a little bit goes a long way (you can spread money out/save money), theres free healthcare, the cost of living is cheaper and many Ecuadorians speak English and are welcoming. Learning more about life in Ecuador really had me considering about retiring here.