Parque Nacional Cajas

We just finished our 2 weeks of Spanish classes, 4 hours each morning. We learned quite a bit and that foundation will serve us well for our remaining 2 1/2 months in South America, but I must say that we are happy to be finished. The whole family has been up at 7 AM each morning for the last 12 days (including last Saturday and Sunday for trips to Cajas and Gualaceo) and we have been studying hard each evening. Learning a new language is not easy, especially for adults! So, today is really the first day since we arrived in Cuenca that we didn’t have homework or need to get everyone up and out of the house early. It feels good!

Last Saturday we went to Parque Nacional Cajas, one of the most beautiful natural sites in Ecuador. It is a mere 30 km from Cuenca and made a great day trip. The altitude ranges from 3,200 to 4,450 m and the temperature averages only 10 degrees Celsius. The park also is blessed with a significant amount of water. It has 230 lakes, many streams and lots of rainfall each year. In fact, the global warming experts theorize that it will receive more rainfall as time goes on.

We traveled to Cajas via minivan early Saturday morning with our guide “Kuko” who is a childhood friend of JM’s friend Andres in Quito. He was a tremendously knowledgeable, friendly and great guide. Our day ended up being a very cold and wet one and you will see that we were in and out of clouds much of the day. That limited our visibility somewhat, but it was still an incredibly beautiful day and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Thankfully, we were fairly well prepared, although tall waterproof boots would have been better than our short “hiking” shoes. (You will see some warming up and drying of socks/pants going on in the lunch pictures below.)

As a brief side note, a number of people have commented about the weather in Cuenca from our clothing in the earlier pictures. It has been unseasonably cool during our stay and we have been bundled up in layers most days. Very few if any buildings have heat here, as it is very near the equator. But, the altitude brings some fairly cool temperatures and we have had only a day or two of truly sunny weather.

Cajas is comprised mostly of Sub-Alpine Pluvial Forest and Alpine Forest, which is more commonly known in the Andes as Paramo. The scenery is very different than the Rockies in Colorado and extremely beautiful in its own special way. Much of the ground is covered by highland straw and other smaller plants that form a cushion that becomes its own water reservoir. The kids really enjoyed jumping on the sections of ground that reverberated under their feet as the water shifted around. We all enjoyed taking in the beautiful scenery, interesting flowers, strange “paper” trees that in forest form are reminiscent of a Grimm’s fairy tale and walking out in the wilderness after spending our early days on the trip in cities with buses, taxis, and lots of people. We would love to go back to Cajas, but probably won’t before we leave Cuenca.

Tomorrow we go horseback riding at a hacienda outside of Cuenca and are hoping for a nice sunny day. Regardless of the weather and studying we are truly enjoying our stay in Cuenca and will be sad to move on.

Hope you enjoy the pictures!!