la un dry

sitting in a surreal theme-park / ecological playground in loja, an internet cafe not takes up what used to be a rail car. very odd. the park is sprawling, sitting on the northern edge of town and counts within its confines a retractable roof swimming pool (pretty cool no?), a miniature russian czar palace (with slides) an ostrich zoo and a fake lagoon for paddle boats.

so yesterday i left cuenca, made my way to the bus terminal where i was told that there was a two hour wait cause the 11 o'clock was "full". not a problem, i sat in the waiting area and watched random snippets of movies that were being shown before i found a tv broadcasting english premier league football.

so i find my seat and settled back for the 5 hour ride and after a while a guy sits down next to me (he was actually sitting in the wrong chair and was moved over). he's obviously not from around cuenca so it's funny that they sat us together for the trip. anyway we're not talking at all - i fell asleep a few kilometers outside cuenca and woke up an hour or so later. the scenery was amazing. the road is narrow and often treacherous, filled with potholes which our driver slolomed around deftly. we went through this steep walled valley and out the window all i could see was a sheer cliff face of light coloured soil with huge boulders sticking out of them and poised just inches away from the bus. but away from the gourge it was amazing verdant scenery that makes the lord of the rings look like an urban wasteland. some of the valleys stretched on forever with bucolic scenes of terraced fields and millions of shades of green.

apparently they are closing... didn't know this.