Cajas National Park

On Thursday, we decided to go to Cajas National Park to do some hiking. It is always on the top things to do while in Cuenca. The park is about 45 minutes away.  To get there, we went to Cuenca’s main bus terminal and hopped on a bus heading toward Guayaquil. Finding the correct place to purchase tickets was a huge accomplishment. We even went to the bus terminal the day before to make sure we knew what we were doing and even took pictures of the times that the bus left. Lo and behold, Anthony did more studying about the bus that night on google, and it STILL was the incorrect place to buy tickets. You have to realize there are many many different vendors with busses going to different or same places. Not knowing the language made it difficult asking even which vendor to go to.

Thankfully, Anthony googled and found instructions on what vendor to look for, and we got on the correct bus. We got off at the Toreadora Ranger Station inside the park.  We knew we would be in for a challenge because the altitude at the ranger station was over 12,000 feet.

Lisa had read on the internet that Route 1 was the easiest and most scenic route at the park. The ranger also recommended that we hike Route 1.  He stated it was an easy, well marked route; just follow the pink markings on the trail. So off we go. It did not take long for us to realize that “easy” is a subjective term. We found ourselves walking on some fairly steep terrain that was slick from recent rains.  The trail was about 4 miles long with several ups and downs. And for Lisa, down is literal as she slipped and fell SEVERAL times. (This is Lisa, and I was even questioning the decision to hike in this park about halfway through with the altitude challenge,  the slick steep trails and how many times I cut my hands and started bleeding from grabbing ahold of plants that was keeping me from sliding so much. Believe me, there were tears. 😢)

We made it to a camping area that had 3 different trails converge on it, with at least 2 of those trails having pink markings. So we thought, which pink trail should we take?  Thank goodness Lisa had downloaded the maps.me app on her phone because it actually had the trails on it and an arrow indicating where we were and which direction we were heading. Without that app, we would have definitely headed in the wrong direction and ended up a far piece from the ranger station.

We made it back to the ranger station pretty tired from our walk. Now we had to stand at a bus stop and try to flag down a bus heading back to Cuenca. While we were standing at the bus stop, a small car pulled out of the ranger station parking lot and stopped on the road. We thought they were stopping to offer us a ride, so we started walking toward their car. A couple of young Hispanic males got out of the car and took some pictures of the park sign. They eventually looked over at us and said, “Cuenca?”, and we excitedly said yes. We jumped in the backseat of the car, and these nice young men who spoke no English gave us a ride back to Cuenca. For those of you that know Lisa, you know she must have been tired and desperate for her to accept a ride from non-English speaking male strangers in a foreign country. These are the pics I took while riding with them.

We made it back to town, but the falls were still not over for Lisa for the day. The sidewalks in Cuenca are very rough and uneven. I was walking in front of Lisa and all of a sudden I hear a grunt and a thump behind me. I look back and Lisa is laying belly down on the sidewalk. I help her up and she has a couple of bloody knuckles and a scraped knee. We made it the rest of the way to our apartment without incident. She was glad this day is over.