Back to our travels while the temple was closed: Ecuador is full of contrasts. In a matter of hours you can travel from the Jungles to desert, from high in the Andes to the ocean. You can be seeing lush verdant foliage or cactus. On the roads you find the newest vehicles and 40 year old vehicles.
In Cuenca, there is old Cuenca, where we stayed while there with beautiful old architecture, balconies on houses and hotels overlooking the narrow streets. Fine restaurants compete with street vendors, where you can get a meal in a plastic bag of hominy, pork and vegetables for $1.50, or corn on the cob grilled over charcoal and painted with a mixture of butter and cheese. A cob of corn and a shishkabob done on a grill will also cost a buck and a half.
On the streets of Cuenca we frequently see Canari people bringing their produce to market. They come in colorful dresses, and the women typically have pigtails tyed with bright ribbons. The dresses a full and pleated and come to the knees, usually embroidered at the hem. They are tough and carry heavy loads. They are a mix of Inca, Canari (native mountain people) and Spanish. They live in the mountains surrounding and are artisans and farmers. They come in every day and come to the large indoor farmers market, to smaller markets, or push wheelbarows full of produce around the streets selling on the street. They also come bringing textiles and leather goods, jewelry and other things to sell in open markets.
There is a street in Cuenca where many of these people have settled. You can see people selling live chickens on the street, or cuy (pronounced cooey- meaning guinea pigs) One street over from that in a large public square we attended a free outdoor concert of the Cuenca symphony orchestra. They opened with a tribute to a passing great musician by playing "Beat It", by Michael Jackson. They played a venue that included pop, classical and traditional Ecuadorian. Cuenca has one or two free outdoor concerts a week.
The city is clean and well kept. Many North Americans are moving there because life is good, and the climate is excellent year around. You do not need air conditioning or heating. Food and rent is cheap, and medical care is excellent. People are finding that their social security or Canada pension allows them to live very well. They are also moving there from various European countries. Cuenca has four rivers passing through it. Our Hostal was on one of them and the sound of the rapids replaced the sounds of the city once the sun went down.
In Cuenca are two Panama hat factories. We visited one. Panama hats got their name because they were very popular with those who built the Panama Canal. They are woven from the leaf stalks of a special palm. How fine they are sliced determines the value and quality of the hat. A very fine hat has very fine strands and takes a weaver a week or two to weave depending. They will hold water and may cost a couple thousand dollars. After being woven they are blocked in a special machine to give it shape. A really fine Panama you can fold up into a little package and stick in your shirt pocket, and it will pop back into shape with no creases.
For twelve dollars you can get a pretty nice hat, like was popular with the mobsters in the 30's and 40's that takes a weaver a day to weave. You can’t fold them up small, but they are much stronger than a straw hat and will last for years. They come in all shapes and colors now, but the traditional Panama is still the most popular.
We got on a bus and went to Inca Pirca for a visit to some Inca ruins. The Incas came from Peru and conquered most of Ecuador. However, they were not able to conquer the Canaris. They were tough mountain people. At Inca Pirca they lived in harmony with each other, and inter married, until the Incas left. The most notable structure remaining was a sun temple made of diorite. It is a green colored stone that looks like a relative of quartz that is very hard. The stones were quarried from a site a kilometer away, and cut into shapes that were not the same size but fitted together without mortar so tightly that you could not slide a knife blade in anywhere. Unfortunately we lost or camera, or what seems more likely, it was stolen, so we have no pictures, and we had some dandies.
After nearly a week in Cuenca we went to Banos. It is a beautiful small town in a valley high in the Andes and surrounded by mountain tops. One of those tops is that of an active volcano, Tungurahua. It smokes and rumbles from time to time, and supplies the heat for the thermal baths at Banos. Debbie and I would start each day at the thermals. There were three pools that went from hot, to warm to cold. There is a waterfall cascading down behind the baths, of cold mountain water. They have captured some and it gushes out of spigots so that after getting too hot you can cool off. After an hour and a half of that we would go back to our hostal for a big breakfast (included), have a nap, go find some lunch on the street from vendors and then climb in the mountains surrounding Banos. One day we rented bikes and went up into and then along the side of a mountain on a road that was more path than road. We met a few of the people who live on the mountain side. They work hard to scratch a living up there. We also took a side trip to Rio Verde and climbed down a gorge and took a walk that went behind a waterfall. Beautiful beyond description.
Travel in Ecuador is easy and inexpensive. They have an incredible bus system. No matter where you want to go, there are big buses leaving all the time. They are huge tour buses with roomy comfortable seats, and they run on time. They are very well organized. The bus terminal in Guayaquil looks like an airline terminal inside, with shops and food court and hundreds of buses leaving from decks on three levels. A seven hour ride from Banos to Guayaquil was 7 dollars per person. I will never forget our ride down the mountain into Banos. The road was on the edge of a steep mountain with many twists and turns, and no guard rails. The bus barreled down it at a speed I didn’t know buses could go. I was relieved to see us come up behind a slow moving transport thinking that would slow us down, but no, we passed him like he was standing still on a curve on the outside edge, same as we did the next truck and all the cars. We won the race I think.
The enclosed pictures are of life around Banos. The first shows how 95% of the farming is done in the Andes. A man with a mattox gardening a slope of about 45 degrees. The second shows how some of the farming is done in the valleys where it is flat enough. A team of oxen pulling a home made wooden plough. We have seen one tractor in all of our travels. The third picture is of a mountainside home of a farmer. Picture 4 is at the top of a mountain overlooking Banos. Debbie and I hiked up there for lunch. Below is Banos. Across the other side of the valley notice the patchwork quilt of gardening on the mountainsides.
Ecuador and Ecuadorians absolutely continue to dazzle me in every way. Pete
Near the temple they were pouring the floor on an apartment building. No concrete trucks and pumper trucks. They mixed it all with a batch mixer. There were about a dozen men on the job. They use wooden boxes with handles to measure and carry the sand and crushed rock to the mixer. There is a pile of rock uphill and a pile of sand downhill. They fill two boxes with sand and three with rock. They shovel fast and carry two boxes at a time. After the sand and rock is in the mixer, in goes the water. The blue barrel is getting constantly filled, and a guy scoops it out with a five gallon pail and throws it in. The winch operator tears the top off a 100lb bag of cement and dumps it in. 
It mixes briefly and is dumped into the big bucket. One batch fills it twice. It gets pulled up and dumped on a sloping platform that is set up to fill the wheelbarrows. Nobody stops moving. These guys run to fill the boxes. It is almost like a dance. The floor slab is about 8" thick. This operation went on for most of the day. If these fellows got $15 for the days work, they did well. More likely $10 or $12. 
The last picture shows a more typical job site with a forest of bamboo poles to support the forms for the next floor.
Ecuadorians know how to work with cement, and they can do some beautiful work. They aren't afraid of hard work. There were no power trowels on this job either. 
Just thought ya might like to know.
Pete 
