a cuenca pit-stop

i made it back to cuenca today. splitting the trip to loja up in to more easily digestable chunks seemed a better option that dealing with the whole 8 hours at once. it's still an amazingly beautiful city - the narrow cobblestone streets, the multitude of artesania stores and cafes (where are all the cafes in guayaquil?) - the parks especially with the ornate, slightly crubling in that oh-so-romantic way. i arrived at about 1:30, dropped my stuff at the cafecito - a place that julia has told me about and is pretty cheap (5 bucks). it's very basic and i'm sharing a room with two others.

so i've got the munchies and decide to hit the veggie place where christine and i came over x-mas. it's still there and still 1.20 for a heaping plate of food, large soup and juice. i barely made a dent in the rice before my stomache was begging for me to stop. on the way back to the hostel i catch a glimpse of a gringa walking along wearing a toquilla hat. well, there's only one gringa i know who does that - julia (the original german). i call out her name and we chat it up a bit. she's battling an illness and was gonna hang out in cuenca for a bit and then go to ambato for carnaval (this weekend, hence the vacation). however she doesn't have a room booked there and therefore might tag along with me to loja. small world.

anyway we decide to head over to the bank of ecuador museum and check out the exhibits. she's only interested in seeing the section with the shrunken heads (a shuar practice of old) but other parts are interesting (and the shrunken heads are pretty cool - very hairy). out back is a ruin that we're allowed to walk about but there's really nothing much there. below the ruin is an interpretive nature center that might have been cooler if it wasn't 10 minutes to closing and they weren't draping things in sheets. we did see some exhibits to birds that were very impressive, if a little depressing at times (seeing an eagle in a cage is not all that much fun). one of the parrots kept saying hi and so long - that was cute.

by the way one of the kittens died yesterday. it was on the smaller side and i thought something was up with the mom because she was meowing a lot more than usual - she sounded concerned. anyway i went in to change their water and such and saw it lying there, rigid as a rock. very sad. i had to put it in a couple of plastic bags (bugs get into everything down here) and put it aside for the guy who comes to look after the house.

ok, will write more from loja.