Cajas National Park & Guayaquil

Two guides certified to lead tours in Cajas National Park met us at our Cuenca hotel. On the bus, we learned some about the park. Cajas is actually a take on a Kichwa word, but it's Spanish meaning coincidentally fits the square lakes. Trout was brought into the park several decades ago. Visitors must be accompanied by a guide during their time at the park, but otherwise have quite a bit of freedom in terms of fishing, camping, and roaming.

Patricio drove us up to the high point of the park and we walked down to meet him a thousand feet lower. Some of my students started showing signs of altitude sickness, so I was glad not to climb uphill. The park was beautiful.

Lots of these little streams

Swampy ground

We learned about a so-called "paper tree," which has a papery bark that is not actually used to make paper.

At this point in our journey, we said goodbye to the highlands, and drove down to the coast. Nearby the city of Guayaquil, we were dropped off at a cacao plantation. The family who owns the plantation took us on tours of the place. We learned more in depth about how the cacao pod is turned into chocolate and received a lesson about grafting.

A grafted tree takes 5-7 years to start producing. Then these pods are picked and sliced open.

The white matter around the seeds was tasty. Normally, though, the seeds are spread out, and the white dries off.

Seeds are spread on the ground like this to ferment and dry.

The other half of our group, across a rice field.

These fruits are traditionally used for makeup.

Sugar cane tasting

Dragon fruit

Our hosts heated matured chocolate seeds, cracked them open, and ground up the insides into a paste.

After adding sugar, hot chocolate was ready for the drinking!

It was humid here, but we did not see as many mosquitoes as expected. In the late afternoon, we drove into the city of Guayaquil. After dinner, we only had a little bit of time to see the city at night. It looks beautiful.

And... that's it! We woke up in the  middle of the night to make our flights and head back to Albuquerque.