Cuenca - Baños

After Guayaquil we headed to Cuenca. Beautiful little town with cobblestones.  We went to the museum del banco central. It's more of a museum for children, in fact there were about 3 different schools on visit when we were there. But it does have the great advantage of displaying 5 real shrunken heads. Very impressive. They are the size of a fist and all have long hair. There was a whole ritual to the shrinking of heads. They would shrink the heads of either murderers or ennemies. It wasn't clearly explained the shrinking method but it seems that they would empty the head and stuff it with plants and then boil the head for a couple of hours. The shrunken head was then a sort of sacred object. They would brush it's hair, wear it around their neck during ceremonies...

From Cuenca, we went to THE Inca site in Ecuador, Ingapirca. A little disapointing to be honest. Pretty but not much to it.

After that we moved on to Baños. We're we've been for the past 4 days. Very peaceful little town too. We rented bikes and went cycling to the next village. On the way there are quite a few waterfalls. We were able to get really close to one of the waterfalls, since they've built stairways right up close, so close that you can practically stand behind the rush of water. No photos cos the camera would have been soaked! Obviously after all that exercise we needed to rest, so we went to the hot baths. Jacuzzi, hammam... and "cajon". The cajon is a little box full of steam in which you sit and only your head pops out. It's like a personal hammam. You sit in it 10 min, then you get out and refresh yourself with a towel soaked in cold water. Then you get back in for 5 mins. Then you get out and throw buckets of cold water on yourself. Then you get back in for another 5 mins. When you get out, you sit in a cold tub and throw buckets of cold water on your head. You get back in for the final 5 mins. When you finally get out for the last time, you have to stand in front of a wall while a woman sprays you with cold water. Torture all the way through, but it felt great at the end! really relaxing!