We were taking up speed and visited two richer cities in the south of Equador: First Cuenca, which some people call the most beautiful town in the country. Indeed, it is a nice city — and it has a small but nice museum about the art of the aborigines with a shrunken head!
Its story is as simple as that: Two neighbouring tribes in the Amazonas region kept attacking each other, the leader of the losing party always ending up as shrunken head. I´ll post a picture soonish…
Continuing the travel, the landscape became more and more lovely; whereas in the region of Latacunga, one was driving through rough and steep mountains; in Baños, we looked up what seemed to be several thousand metres from the crack the river was flowing in to the mountain´s top — now, if someone had shown me a picture and told me that it was in northern Italy, I would have believed it.
Near Loja, we payed a visit to the rain forest (still on 2500m!). If someone does not know why it is named “rain forest” — we can tell now… The afternoon was more successful though when we visited a lovely botanic garden. It is simply amazing to see all those flowers that we try to cultivate under extensive care at home growing here as trees.