It's not only the ride the Cuenca that is beautiful, also the town itself is pretty. Many stay for days but I felt ready to go after two days, maybe missing some of the 'things to see', but so what. Next time, ey?
From there I could've taken a bus directly to Baños, my next target, but LP had managed to convince me that even though the road from Guayaquil to Guaranda wasn't really on the way, it was definitely worth seeing. So I took off to Guayaquil (4 hours, 8$) and continued from there to a place I'd never heard off, but it's location on the map fit my plan, Babahoyo (2 hours, 2$). There was not much to see in the city, but it was nice not seeing ANY other gringos at all, all locals. 
After a night in a hotel closest to where my bus left me (10$ for a suite) I took the first morning bus to Ambato and made sure I had batteries on my camera. First it seemed that the whole trip was going to be a waste of time, because it was rainy and very misty, but as soon as we started getting higher, above the mist, the views got more and more amazing. 
At the Ambato bus terminal I bumped into an Israeli girl who asked my help in getting to Baños and after being (nicely put) misinformed by four different people working in different bus companies, we managed to catch the right bus directly from the street (1$).
One of these annoying sellers that get on buses in Latin America to disturb you by shouting their sales speeches and trying to get everyone to buy stuff they don't want or need made the mistake of sitting next to me on the way and tried to make conversation. I couldn't of course stop myself from telling him what I think of his profession, but bought some chewing gum (that I donated to another sales dude) anyway. He said that he knows other gringos too, but they are nicer. "Hah, hah, ha - really?! Nice gringos, how could that be...?"
In Baños I went against my normal style of avoiding LP hostels and joined the Israeli girl who wanted to stay in Hostal Plantas y Blanco (dorm bed for 6,5$) even though many other hotels on the way there provided private suites with cable tv for 8$. Wifi made the difference. My latest travelling companion proved to be the spitting image of the gringos I call LP backpackers by asking me to join her for a pizza: "I don't like the local food at all, not that I would've tried it either. It would give you a diarrhea for sure. I mean, food isn't really part of the local culture you want to experience, is it?".
When I told her I've had 90% of all my meals in the last 6 months either in cheap, non-LP-recommended, locals-only restaurants or on the side street food stands, she looked simply shocked. Yeah, I happen to think getting to know the food culture is a vital part of experiencing a new place.
In the dorm I met a Canadian couple who had by driving too fast managed to break a street buggy they had rented, or from their perspective, that suddenly broke when they had only used it for half of the time they paid for. They didn't speak Spanish and the Spanish-only speaking owner was holding their passports until they had paid 50$ extra for the damage they'd caused. I went in to translate (read: tear that scam guy into bits) and we managed to find a compromise for 30$ and I offered to translate some vital information for future buggy drivers into English so this, the couple completely misunderstanding his instructions because of the language barrier, wouldn't happen again.
The couple spent a lot of money on their very short ride, the rental office lost a lot of money for repairs and for lost rental time, but everyone loved me and wanted to buy me drinks and dinner in the end.
Instead of visiting the natural hot fountains Baños is famous for and that were the reason I had decided to come here, I sat the whole next morning online trying to figure out my return flight situation: Mexicana stopping its flights to Europe. I had read online that they probably wouldn't refund anything and getting my money back from the credit card company might take a while, so I had already got emotionally ready to cut my trip shorter than planned and found a decent combination of four flights taking me from Venezuela to Finland for 6200sek in the beginning of October.
Just before booking them I decided to invest in giving Mexicana a call to confirm that they can't offer me other options and it's a good thing that I did. After waiting in the queue for the Mexicana U.S. customer service on Skype for over a half an hour and not being able to get help 'cause the service agent couldn't hear me (hey for skype!), I went to give it another shot in local call centre. After a 34 minutes and luckily only a few dollars, I got an answer I didn't expect: I'd have a flight home on the same day as originally planned, just with another airline. I was to happy to find out I'd get to see Central America and my mates in Mexico again, but sad that I'd lost the perfect excuse to come home early and spend more time with the good peeps of Finland before starting to work again.
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