I can remember that about an hour into the second leg of the drive to Cuenca, Bud said, “You know, I would give a lot for a decent stretch of straight road.”  Well, it was another couple of hours before he saw THAT!  One thing about driving in Ecuador is that you need to be on point every second. There is no regard for single solid, broken or double solid lines on the roads.  If you wanted to pass the car or multiple vehicles in front of you and you thought you had a decent chance of doing it and staying alive…you went for it!!!  There may be 2-4  cars going in the same direction at any given moment on a 4 lane road.  It was crazy.  Oftentimes, there were NO lines on the road!  Probably because of the inconsistency of road conditions.  All I know is that Bud was not doing the driving on this adventure of ours, we would both have been in big trouble.  I’d have been in a straight jacket by this point.  The truly amazing thing about it is that there are no accidents and pretty much no one beeps their horn while this craziness is going on!

My walking buddy…lol Spotted him out of the corner of my eye while walking along the river by Rita and Henry’s house

On the road

     Finally, we were close enough to Cuenca that I texted my friend Rita for the final directions.  It turned out to be our biggest adventure of the day…LOL  First off, there were NO SIGNS with the town’s name on it…Challuabamba!  Rita said to meet her and Henry at the Primary gas station just after the underpass.   The Google Maps chick was of little or no help.   At one point we discovered that Rita meant the Primax gas station.  We did find one and we called them.  They were at one location and we at another.  The funny thing was that the two were only a block away from one another but on the other side of the street!  AND, of course there was no place to get across without going quite a few miles.  Don’t you know that as Bud and I were driving to eventually turn around, we noticed an open area with caution tape across it….it sure looked like an invitation to us!!!!  And we RSVPed…YES!  Within 5 minutes, we saw Rita and Henry waving to us at the correct Primax station.  Whew!  Hugs, kisses, handshakes and no shortage of smiles were exchanges!  We then followed them to their home about a half hour away.

Rita, Henry and me…FINALLY!