We drive down the mountain with the closed tequila distillery and we are hungry. By chance we find an exceptional place for lunch. A very modern building offers five cooking zones where cholitas cook different dishes.

A small, wrinkled woman approaches us and offers us a selection of her dishes. I hardly understand a word and choose anything from what she tells us.

While we wait we see the guinea pigs sizzling over the grill of another cooking area. Something suspiciously bounces back and forth in a small bag that no one notices.

I hope we don’t get a guinea pig. Or something similar.

Then the food comes and we are pleasantly surprised. There’s nutritious cabbage soup with beans, boiled white corn, fried eggs with rice and potato balls, and some of the finest cocoa I’ve ever tasted. The old lady who prepares our food is tiny and has a limp. But their food is fantastic. She is happy about our effusive compliments and we order more cocoa, new tortillas and soup.

It tastes so good. In the end, the whole feast costs only eight dollars. In total. This is how it can be endured in Ecuador. We still give the lady a generous tip and ask her to take a souvenir photo with us.

We continue on the Panamericana and see a sign that says there are waterfalls here.

The trip takes us an hour, but the road ends at a farm instead of the cascades we had hoped for, and we have to turn back.

We will reach the city of Cuenca in the afternoon and stay there for a week. I have to take the car to the workshop. But this time without a glitch.

The oil and filter need to be changed and some things need to be fixed for the planned sale of the car at the end of our trip.