Things to do
6-
Cajas National Park
Above the tree line west of Cuenca, a plateau of some two hundred and thirty lakes sits in páramo grassland at around 4,000 metres, cut by polylepis woodland in the hollows. Marked trails range from an hour to a full day. Weather turns fast and cold rain is normal, so a registered route and warm layers matter.
-
Cuenca Cathedral
Three blue and white domes in glazed Czech tile stand over the main square, on a church begun in 1885 and never given the towers its architect drew. The interior runs to marble columns and a gilded baldachin. A rooftop walk between the domes opens at set hours and gives the clearest view of the tiled skyline.
-
Historic Centre
Republican facades, ironwork balconies and cobbled streets fill a grid laid out on Inca and Cañari foundations, listed by UNESCO in 1999. Workshops still block and finish toquilla straw hats within a few streets of the cathedral. The riverside barranco below the centre carries a walkway that most visits miss, and it shows the city in section.
-
Ingapirca
Ecuador's largest Inca site stands on a ridge two hours north of Cuenca, built over an earlier Cañari settlement that the Inca absorbed. An elliptical sun temple of fitted stone is the surviving centrepiece, with storehouses and a Cañari cemetery around it. Wind on the ridge is constant and the ground is exposed, so afternoons can be raw.
-
Mirador de Turi
From a church terrace on the hillside south of the city, the whole grid of Cuenca lays out below with the Cajas ridges behind it. A ceramics workshop nearby keeps studio hours. Buses climb most of the way and taxis finish it; evening is when the domes light up, and the terrace is cold once the sun drops.
-
Pumapungo
Terraces, canals and foundation walls are what remains of Tomebamba, the northern Inca capital that Spanish chroniclers compared with Cusco before it was dismantled. An ethnographic museum above the site covers Ecuador's regions, including shrunken heads from the Shuar. Entry is free, and the garden of native plants and rescued birds runs down to the river.