Casa Tranquila

While visiting Cuenca recently I had the chance to invite a non-caching friend out to find one of Ecuador's older caches, Casa Tranquila (GCXC0Q). My friend, Al, had seen me hide a cache the day before in Loja and now was driving me out to this mountain just north of Cuenca. The cache owner indicated in the cache page that cachers should find the cache and then come on in to the house for coffee. We drove up the dirt road until reaching the GZ, parked by the road and followed the needle and the clue to the cache. After signing the log and trading items we went to the house but it was all locked up and looked like no one had been there for a while. We recalled that the previous cacher had mentioned that no one was there. We then drove up to the top of the mountain to get a good view of the valley. We could see north Cuenca, the town of Azogues and Cojitambo mountain directly in front of us. When we got back to Al's house we looked up the profile of the cache owner, a North American who had retired in Ecuador, and found that he had left the country to work in the US some four years earlier. Fortunately the cache was in good shape but we missed being able to visit with him and share that cup of coffee. The city of Cuenca doesn't have any caches yet it is the third largest city in Ecuador. If you are coming to Cuenca you can visit the two closest caches. Casa Tranquila is one and the other is Cajas National Park, about 19 miles northwest of Cuenca.