On this week's travel in 10, we're going to a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Perched in the Andes, a city with old world charm and bohemian ease.

A place where every cobblestone seems to carry a story and it encourages you to kind of slow down and listen.

It is my first time ever going to Cuenca, a place I know you've spent some time before, Tim.

Yes, absolutely.

But it's been a really long time.

I only remember that it was really beautiful.

I remember the cobblestone streets.

I remember the old town.

And I think they have Panama hats.

I think that's a thing there.

Panama hats are huge.

You hear a lot about the Panama hats when you were in Ecuador.

Surprisingly, they are.

You'll discover and you'll hear many times they are from Ecuador, not from Panama.

Yeah, not Panamanian.

Ecuadorian.

So.

But it's been a really long time since I've been there.

So I'm excited to hear what you have to say about your recent visit to Cuenca.

Well, I had.

I had an amazing trip.

I was down there for the Adventure Travel Trade Association's Adventure Next conference, which was a great event.

A really good group that I spent about a week traveling around Ecuador with.

And I got to know a guy, Philippe from 2 Degrees Expeditions down there, who leads a lot of trips around Ecuador.

And Cuenca is actually his hometown.

So for today, we're going to be going live to Cuenca to hear a little bit about Philippe's take on some of the best to see and do in the city.

Sounds amazing.

For people who have maybe never heard of Cuenca before or have never been here, tell us a little about what.

What makes it so special.

So Cuenca can be taken from many different points.

I think the most important is if you go back to history, this place has been inhabited for around 10,000 years.

There's been people inhabiting this valley.

And this is a big valley in the south highlands of Ecuador.

You don't have many valleys.

This is actually the old name of the city.

This is like the one around 5,000 years.

It was called Guapon Deli.

Guapon Delhi means valley as big as the sky.

Beautiful, beautiful name.

And the reason for this is that we are in a valley surrounded by mountains.

This used to be a glacier.

Eventually it became a lake.

And then this first civilization started settling in the upper rim.

So in the upper mountains because the center was flooded.

And then when the Spanish came in 1557, they established the city here.

They didn't really pay that much attention to what was there because this was already burned.

The Incas, when they left after the fight with the Spanish, they just burned the whole city.

And seems like this was the northern capital of the Inca empire.

So this was not just any city, this was a sacred city.

When you had an Inca born in a city, they would declare the whole city a saint, a sacred city.

And the reason for this is that the Inca was considered the son of the sun.

So he was the son of the sun was not even human.

Considered human.

They would actually, if he would die, they, they would have him mummified and everybody would still venerate him.

So the city of Cuenca supposedly had the mummies of all the Incas or some of the Incas that actually weren't here.

And these made it into a sacred city.

The Spanish didn't really see this and they just used all the stones.

They declared it public quarry and then the city started using these stones.

So when you go to the old cathedral of the city and you look into the bases, everything is beautiful.

Inca stones.

Yeah, so I think that's one point of it to see the historical section.

This is the northern capital of the Inca empire.

Another important thing when you see it from the natural point being this glacier based town, it has four rivers that gorkos.

So right outside the place where we're sitting right now, there's a river.

And when you go outside, you hear the river at night.

So many people when they come to the sea, they're like, wow.

You have the sounds of the river in the back, you have birds, you have everything, you.

And then also the natural spots.

So when you're in Quito or the big city, it takes you hours to get out of the city.

Here you take your bike or your car and 10 minutes you're outside of the city and you have like thermal space, you have mountains, you have like birds and things that are around the place.

So this is a place that you can actually get very natural food.

Crops are really close to the place.

So.

So this also provides food that's very nice.

So when you go to the gastronomy section, you have.

This city has also been isolated from the rest of the country, the rest of the highlands, because it was really hard to get.

So it would take you days from Guayaquil to actually travel here and days from Quito.

So this made it into a city that was isolated.

So we developed our own gastronomy, our own culture.

We have a different dialect than the rest of the country.

So this is kind of interesting.

I think it's unique.

It's a unique city and it's a.

UNESCO World Heritage site.

It's a UNESCO World Heritage site because of the architecture and because of this idea of the Cuencanos, the local people holding the traditions and the culture, the architecture and protecting the patrimony.

Yeah, that historic part of the city, very, very well preserved.

Yes.

It's not the biggest patrimony, not the biggest historical center because Quito has a larger historical site.

But then the Cuenca is just a city where you can walk at any time of the day.

It's very saf.

Very charming.

The people are really nice and there's beautiful restaurants and beautiful viewpoints.

Yson one thing I noticed traveling around the city a little bit yesterday afternoon, always like to go to a local market when I'm in different cities and experience that there are many markets here.

I mean, I went to three just in a short period of time.

But looking on Google maps, markets all over the city, which any ones that you recommend.

So I recommend one market that I really like.

It's called Diaz de Agosto.

So market Diaz de Agosto has everything.

Most of the markets used to be for the old people.

The ancestral people would be places for gathering and they would include religion.

So you go into this market and you find Jesus and you have the baby Jesus or the Virgin Mary in.

In different places of the market.

So people actually go pray there.

It's like a church.

Then you also have a place for.

For food.

So you have, I mean fruits, you have potatoes, you have food court.

So you can also go try some local food inside of the market.

They're pretty clean, so they have a delicious.

What's the name of that?

This is Ornado.

Ornado, because it comes from the word oven.

Yeah.

So orno, it's oven.

And the idea is that you put these roast or this huge pig with fruits and local things that are there and you put it inside of an oven and you slow cook it for more than 24 hours.

So that keeps the meat really delicious and really soft, very juicy.

So when you try it, it has like these flavors of the fruits that are available in the time of the year.

Remember that we are in the tropics, so there's always fruits.

We never have a scarcity of fruits.

And there's different fruits available throughout the year.

So for example, mangoes are available in December.

Then you have apples in May.

That's kind of how it works.

So you have fruits in different times.

I had a very unique experience at.

The market yesterday that I'm hoping you could tell me a bit more about.

Because I'm not sure exactly what I did.

There were some sort of traditional healers in the middle of the market and they did some sort of a ceremony where different essential oils and things they would put in your hands and you smell.

They cracked an egg over me.

They hit me with branches.

I wasn't exactly.

It was all in Spanish and unfortunately my Spanish is not nearly as good as I would like.

I understood very little of what was going on.

You explained to me and this was a lady, right?

Yes.

So here in.

Usually shamans or these healer in the rest of the country are males, but here, the Kanyari culture used to be a women based society.

So the last shamans that are kept in the South Highlands are actually women.

That's why it was a woman that was healing you.

And the idea of this thing is to heal you.

So to heal your energy field.

To do that, they use some branches of actually powerful plants.

One of them is a hallucinogen plant, this yellow flower.

So they take this and they hit you with this and it's supposed to clear your energy field.

They hit you while they kind of do like, shoo, shoo, shoo, because they want to like expel the demons out of you.

Then they take this egg and the egg is, well, it's a cell, so it actually absorbs your energy.

What they do is they rub you with this egg all around your body, everywhere.

And then they crack the egg open into a glass of water and they breathe.

And they say, oh, you've been, you have a problem with your nerves.

So that's what they do.

And then they give you usually a remedy.

So they say, oh, take this drink.

And if you drink this, you're gonna heal.

Come back on next Friday.

They do these healings Tuesdays and Fridays every week.

Yeah.

So when you go on Tuesday or Friday, you were very lucky to see that yesterday you have the shamans actually using this place as the market, as a healing place.

So you see a fruit market, you have the religious, you have the syncretism between the religious and the shamans.

And you also have.

If you go to the second floor of these markets, you will always find the place where they get all these medic medicine.

So you have all the actual medicines, the plants that they use for healing.

And many local people there experiencing it.

When I was there, yes.

I didn't realize it was only on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Yeah, very lucky.

And we do this with our kids.

Like for example, when My kids can't sleep.

I actually take them to one of these healers and they sleep very nicely.

At night And I sat very well and well, I did a couple of all this experiences yesterday.

One was in the market, the other one was I was lucky enough to go with your wife up to the hot springs area and enjoyed it so much.

I returned back there again yesterday.

Lucky you.

Quite a few up there.

There's.

How many hot springs resorts are there?

There is five, but the two best ones are the one you use and the one we used the other day.

Yeah, and they have been there for a long, long time.

I believe the Spanish, when they came, the spring waters were located in a different place because they move once in a while.

I guess tectonic movements actually move their Cherno springs and they have been located for a while.

There's a beautiful hotel there where you can stay and just bathing thermal springs all day if you want.

And then also experiences with like chocolate bars or stuff like that that actually complement the experience to make it nicer.

Yeah, so we've talked a little bit about why to come.

I mean some amazing Walvis experiences, some very neat cultural experiences, culinary experiences here in town.

Once people arrive here, where should they stay?

What are two or three great hotels.

In town, places you would recommend for me?

There's beautiful hotels.

I think the downtown Cuenca has the beautiful experience of having you in a boutique hotel.

Not too big, not too large, a few rooms, also close experiences.

Maybe only 12 rooms inside of a hotel.

I would say my favorites are Parc Royale.

It's a beautiful hotel, new old building from the 1900s but it has unique rooms also that can show you the local culture and you have amazing views on the windows out to the cathedrals.

And then also there's one that's called Itza that also has an amazing viewpoint of the cathedral and amazing rooms also.

And another one, very charming, is called Santa Lucia.

So like St. Lucia.

And this also has an internal garden with some nice trees there and a beautiful incredible French restaurant.

We have a lot of French influence.

We had the French expedition, scientific expedition in the 1700s that came to Cuenca and that kept us in love with the French.

So this is like the French city of Cuenca, that's how they call it.

So when it comes to food, I know from some of the places you take this, you clearly are a foodie.

Do you appreciate good food?

What are a couple places that local foodies really love that people need to see?

So two place two, my favorite restaurants in the city I'm a vegetarian, but of course I have clients that want to try some meat.

So two places that I really like is La Maria.

La Maria is a new experience led by two women and we were talking about the women led society.

So these are two women that had their husbands cook, they were chefs so they kind of like decided to work with them and now they lead this beautiful experience cuisine that's called La Maria.

So that's one of them.

It uses traditional ingredients that are being lost to rescue them and then provide like international fusion cuisine.

And the other one is called Dos Sucre.

Sucre was our main currency in year 2000.

So this is called Dos Sucres.

And Dos Sucres offers an incredible range of local ingredients and fusion cuisine also.

But they have their own gardens so they actually produce gardens and they buy local products from the surrounding areas of Cuenca.

So it makes it into a complete experience because you're supporting the local people and the local agriculture.

So it's kind of cool.

If there's one thing people shouldn't miss when they come here to Cuenca, what would it be?

Walking in the city.

Walking in the city at any time of the day, I think it gives you the charm.

And also walking alongside the rivers.

There's 40 km of cycle tracks and paths that you can walk listening to the river and just walking.

So yesterday with one of my friends here in the fair, we actually walked from here to downtown.

It took us 20 minutes.

Yeah, pretty close.

And we walked along the river.

It was an amazing walk.

Now I know you do a lot of tours around southern Ecuador.

Do you do tours here in the city as well?

Yes, we do.

We do a hiking tour, we do city tour, we do an E bike tour.

If you're not that fit, you can actually come and use one of our E bikes.

And it's an incredible thing because if you do an E bike tour, you can combine it with the thermal spins.

So you E bike, you enjoy the city, you stop for ice cream on the way, try some of the local cuisine, places on the side of the cycle track and then you end up at the thermal springs.

There seems to be just driving around the city.

There's a lot of theaters, I imagine there's a lot of live music, live theater and stuff here as well.

Yes, the city is very quiet in most of the days but then when you go out at night, you can find live music and you can find theater.

Cuenca is known as a very cultural city.

They call it the.

The city of culture.

So it's kind of nice to actually find some of these places around and.

Somewhere we didn't get to visit but just driving by looks very interesting.

Was that the archaeological site that you've got right in the city here as well?

Yes.

Being this the northern capital of the Inca empire one place that was kept is the Puma Pungo city.

Puma Pungo is a city that was here with the Inca so you can actually visit the ruins and it has a garden outside.

Very, very cool.

So I think to have a.

An Inca brewing inside of the city is something that causes the attention of a lot of travelers.

Yeah.

Why great street art too.

Does anybody do street art tours?

There should be one if there's not.

Yes, we used to have a graffiti tour because actually the city has been trying to fill empty spaces into the walls with beautiful graffiti art.

So a couple of years ago we had a contest here of more than a contest like an art experience where graffiti art people from all around the world came and painted some of these worlds so sometimes you can find some important art or street art people that have come to Cuenca and you find their paintings in the world.

It's kind of cool.

And then also they decided to paint some of the posts the posts for electricity and some of these electricity boxes around the city instead of leaving them just be gray or white they painted them with beautiful paintings of people.

Well, it's a beautiful place.

Thank you so much for sharing it.

You're very welcome.

I hope you can go and visit and have you people also enjoy the city of Cuenca one time.

Thanks very much.