Cuenca

I am lovin Spring Break. We are currently in Cuenca which is in the Southern part of Ecuador in the province of Azuay. It is a gorgeous town with quaint streets and architecture that is very European. I don´t really feel like I am in Ecuador except for the fact that Movistar and Porta cell phone shops are every where and people speak Spanish. Haha, it is great though. We took a bus from Quito that took about 10 hours. Lindsay, Mujtaba and I left at 6:30am (which was a bit rough considering we celebrated Hannah´s birthday the night before at a Salsa Club). Hannah and her friend Jason (who is here for his spring break) didn´t wake up in time so they took a later bus to Guayaquil and then a bus from there to Cuenca. Rough... I am glad we made the 6:30 bus. It was nice that is stopped for lunch too.

When we arrived we headed to our hostal which is called el Cafecito. It is super cute and has a nice cafe in the front that has really good food. After dropping our stuff off we headed out to check out the town a bit. I took some great pictures of store fronts that said funny things like a panaderia (bread store) that said ¨Paris Brest¨. I am not sure if they meant to say Paris Best or what but it was funny. I also found a store front that said ¨Bizar Ocasiones¨. I liked that one. We walked down to the river as well which is absolutely gorgeous. I will try and put up photos when I get back to Quito. We ate dinner at a place called Roma´s Pizza which made my mouth water. Homeade pasta...mmm mmmm.

Today we headed out to Ingapirca which is an Incan ruin site that is the start of the Incan Trail that goes all the way to Machu Pichu. It was really cool and interesting. The temple of the sun is the only Incan structure that is round and it is said to be that way because the Cañari people who were there before the Incan´s influenced them in the architecture. It was not good to have anything completely square because the circle and spiral were very important to the Cañari people and signified the life cycle. Cool huh? After we got back to Cuenca we went to the Orquideario which is an Orchid farm. There are over 400 different types of Orchids there and while not all of them were blooming, the ones that were were amazing. There is one type that has the name Dracula and it only grows from something that is hanging so maybe on a ledge or overhang in the wilderness. Very cool.

Well, it is St. Patty´s day and I think we might go celebrate, however, they don´t sell guinness anywhere here let alone any good beer besides Heineken and Corona occasionally. There is budweiser at a few places too but Pilsener, Club, and Brahma are pretty much the standard. Pilsener tastes a little better than Natty and anyone who knows Natty knows what that means. Haha. Cheers!