Por Fin! CUENCA!

About 3 weeks later, here it goes! Sorry about the wait, I was feeling the pressure as tons of people emailed, facebooked, and twitted me to get another post up. I was going to try to get out my You Know You're In Ecuador When... post, but I never even had the time to do this one. Here goes nothing:

When we decided to go to Cuenca, Ecuador's third largest city (Guayaquil - 1, Quito - 2), I was a little bit preoccupied over how bored I might be. One of our teachers told us that “yes, you can have fun and party with the women there, but you’ll have to go to church with them the next day, and marry them the next year.” With this, I wasn’t entirely excited to take the 8 hour overnight bus (a whole different story in itself. So uncomfortable that I ended up sleeping for an hour and a half, an hour of that being in the isle) to head to the religious capital of Ecuador. But, we got a really cool hostel for $9 per night (a little spendy) with this view:

 It reminded me of the It’s A Small World ride at Disneyworld, am I the only one?

Being the religious capital of Ecuador, there are TONS of churches, all of them dating from around 1600, after the inquisition (I am learning something here!) This is the first one we went to, with such an amazing plaza outside, and architecture on the inside:

We ended up sitting in the pews for a little while, watching the locals do their thing. I started to get a little scared that I would be spited by some being inside the church, because I clearly stuck out like a sore thumb: I don't belong in churches. So, we left the church quickly amongst all the Hail Marys to go somewhere better: a cafe to get some beer:

Apparently here in Ecuador, it's customary to serve beer on a silver platter, so I had to take a picture.

Next stop: Chordeleg, which is known for it's "Market" of gold and silver, but when we asked for the Mercado, they led us to this:

This was the real Market, full of fresh fruits, vegetables, and pigs a'roastin'. The best part was that our whole group took part in the festivities, we all tried the pig. We got crispy pig skin, fried pig fat, and fried pork. That poor thing was sacrificed for our benefit, but it was tasty! Thanks, piggy!

After further investigation, we discovered the silver and gold jewelry mecca of Ecuador was a little further down the road. This was one of the only churches in the small town, and the shops were to the left, right, and in front of the church. With no shopping success (except for some inappropriate pens that I can't wait to give to my friends), we decided to head back to Cuenca. After in Cuenca for a few minutes, we were off to one of the largest Incan Ruins in Ingapirca.

These ruins were really fun to walk around and traipse about with the llamas who were hanging out in the ruins with us. The biggest part in the far background was a sun temple, where all the people went to worship the sun and pay their tributes to the sky. All the stones were parts of aqueducts, homes, baths, and tombs. Speaking of tombs, here's a picture of us desecrating the ruins:

Supposedly, these are ancient tombs, in which some of the most important Incan Leaders were buried. After sitting in them and pretending that they were hottubs. The guard (with a machine gun) ran up to us to quickly tell us we disrespected the culture of Incan descendents. After that, it seemed like we could do nothing more to ruin the ruins, but we made sure to be careful and follow the path from then on to prevent being shot. Although maybe I could sell this picture on eBay as the only people to sit in these tombs? Hopefully there's some money in this, because I'm quickly running out down here.

Another picture of us at the sun temple, the whole group (minus Justine). We all think it would be a perfect album cover if we ever put out a CD together, which will never happen. Nonetheless, I really like the fact that I'm smack-dab in the middle!

Back to Cuenca, we went to a really cool museum that happened to have a whole bunch of birds in a (semi) hidden area. The best was this toucan, maybe the first I've seen in such close proximity? We were about 5 feet away from it (granted, they were in a cage, but still...)

Looks like that's it from Cuenca, finally! The weekend after that we stayed in Quito, and I'll post something about that on Wednesday. Off to class!

Best,

Blair