Ingapirca to Cuenca. 78Kms. 1055 metres of climbing. Summit reached at 3500 metres.

I managed to sleep part of the night, and certainly not as much as I would have liked. The problem with staying in any motel or hotel is noise, and when you put 40 cyclists in a place you're bound to hear everything during the night. At least breakfast was excellent and a good start for the day.

Today's stage was a lot easier than yesterday's feeling of being brutalised on all the climbs. We left town and then dropped down into the valley, and once at the bottom the fun began. The tour only raced till the 40km mark which where lunch was waiting for us. It was far too dangerous to ride the remaining 37kms into the busy city of Cuenca.

Like usual I thought I would see how my legs were feeling after yesterday so I put in hard turn at the bottom of the climb and then found myself on my own. This was short lived as Rein and Dietrich caught and passed me about 2kms up the climb. No matter how hard I pushed I couldn't stick with them. James was behind me and so I pressed on and ride the 10km climb with James. Barry and Jerg was only a short distance behind and I was hoping they would come across to us.

By the top of the mountain I couldn't see the 2 guys in front so I thought today was not going to be my day for the win. I think I left everything on the road yesterday. We roared down the mountain heading for the village of Biblian to our lunch stop. The 'Bike Dreams' flag was on the side of the road indicating the lunch truck was nearby.

James and I had our time ticked us and we lost about 5 minutes on the leaders. Not sure how I'm placed at this stage. Barry and Jerg arrived about 8 minutes behind us. After lunch we had to put our warm weather gear back on before we took on the final 37kms into Cuenca.

We are staying at the Hotel Espana which is really nice. Our bike are located in the courtyard of the hotel and Barry and I have a twin room. Some of the other cyclists have 3 to a room. We're special. After a nice hot shower, first in 2 days, a shave and putting on sort of clean clothes we were ready to walk the streets.

We headed for the small square a couple of blokes from the hotel to try and get our clothes washed. The first 2 we came across had closed down, so Barry went into a hostel and they agreed to wash our clothes for $1 US per pound. We got all our clothes washed for $5.50. I didn't even consider bargaining at that price.

There was one funny thing that happened today and I should mention I do love dogs. Now I've mentioned how bad the dogs are in this part of the world, well, this one dog was chasing the 4 of us along the grass verge, barking and showing off it's teeth like it wanted to eat us when it went bang head first into a pole. You should have seen this dog get cleaned up. I don't think we laughed so much in a long time. This dog went head first, flat out into a pole. Teach the mongrel from chasing Terry Wall.

Ingapirca to Cuenca. 78Kms. 1055 metres of climbing. Summit reached at 3500 metres.

Just a photo of one of the may churches in the city of Cuenca.

That's Barry and his good friend Max down in the courtyard of the hotel. When the cyclists come to town they certainly take over the place.

The rest of the day was chilling out, going for dinner for more chicken, and working out what we will do on our rest day. Tomorrow is our first rest day of the tour, and I need it.

Until tomorrow, safe riding.