Cajas

 We took a day trip from Cuenca to Cajas National Park. We were already pretty much in love with Cuenca, and the proximity of this fantastic park made it even better. The park is about 45 minutes from town. It is famous for the high altitude lakes. This area was glaciated during the major glaciation, and glaciers cut big U-shaped valleys and left lots of lakes. The entrance road to the park crossed beautiful farmland, and passed by an Incan road. From there we hiked to the first big lake. Our hike took us through the forest that rings each lake. We saw lots of hummingbirds, which of course you can't see very well here. They really are there.

 Eventually our hike took us around to the ruins of an old brewery. What a fantastic place to work this must have been!

At the end of our trip, we looked at the map and realized that we had gone about an inch worth of distance on the big fold-up map of the park. This would be a great spot for some backpacking. I hope we can come back to see more of this.