View from an 8 hour transport

We are now in Cuenca, south central Ecuador, still in the Andes.  We're in a furnished apartment here for a month -- of Spanish lessons, organizing, hanging out.  It's a delight to be here and unpacked.  And it's a great little city (albeit with 500,000 people).

Our ride down included a 1.5 hour taxi through the ash-fallout zone from the occasionally erupting Volcano Tungurahua.  I wrote yesterday that it does no damage -- and was only partly right. No humans harmed. The ash fallout zone SE of town is pretty impressive.  Ash fallout happened last week with the constant minor eruptions, and the road (some might not call it that) was cleared for passage very quickly.  Correa's pretty amazing in his focus on roads and transport -- Ecuadoreans seem to love him, I can see why.   Anyway, a few photos of the road we traveled through the ash zone. 

Road cleared within feet of this view.  These rocks are taller than I am.

 

Playing with the ash, taxi driver explaining stuff.

Our road, cleared/cut (again) through the ash field a few days ago.

Not sure what this is, but something was there before. 

 Wash of ash that crossed the road.

Ash is kind of unstable, and great fields of it can collapse.

The long-distance buses here are good, cheap, mostly clean, with assigned seats and safe, ticketed suitcase storage below.  One must hold on to carry-ons, though, for safety of valuables, as opportunists await.  We've got it figured out, paranoically perhap, but we've "lost" something only once.  This sign was at the front of the bus.

"Please don't insist that the driver go faster than 90 km/h legal limit" - these are winding mountain roads.

Don't know the significance of this one, but most towns have at least one big sculpture decorating a central spot. 

The central sierras are productive farm land.  We're here just as the drier season is ending, harvesting pretty well over, and plowing and planting's going on.  Scenes from the road.

One small area had lots of haystacks.  This one was near a swampy area with lots of reeds.

One long stretch of the farmland along the highway was planted up the hills, instead of terracing, which is more the norm.

Quinoa awaiting harvest.

Something, just planted.

Do these photos really work for you readers?  They seem so small and ineffective in communicating the grandeur, the beauty, the fullness of the views -- always a drawback of photos  . . . ?