My last day in Cuenca!

My last week in Cuenca was really nice. Thursday I went to lunch with Carmita and had cuy (guinea pig). It tasted fine, but it was hard to eat because they give you the whole thing, including the head, and you have to just rip it apart with your hands and teeth. I couldn´t make myself eat the head, even though I´d been told it was the best part. It had teeth and everything. Carmita took it home for her family. On Friday we had a little goodbye party. Two new British students, a couple, had come so we all ate and danced and drank canelazo (a warm cinnamon drink with sugar cane alcohol). I made a carrot cake with cream cheese icing and they were all very impressed because they don´t make sweet things with carrots or cream cheese here, apparently. The recipe I got from the internet wasn´t as good as Grammy´s and so I promised Carmita that I would send her that recipe when I get home.

I went to Loja over the weekend hoping to go to a nearby national park and the market in Saraguro. The park didn´t work out, so I was stuck in Loja all day Saturday, and there wasn´t much to do. Saraguro was nice though. The women there wear heavy, pleated black skirts, big white hats with designs on the underside of the brim, and big beautiful pins that hold their shawls together. The men wear black shorts, black ponchos and one long thick braid. It is the first place I´ve been to where their were as many men in traditional clothing as women. Traveling here is funny becuase you go places and there isn´t really anything to do except people watch, and the people watching is great. You go on market day because that´s when everyone else is there, but a market full of raw meat and dried beans isn´t much use to a traveler without a kitchen.

I´m back in Cuenca for the day before heading to Guayaquil in the morning and flying to Lima in the evening. It is nice to be back. I will miss Cuenca. Especially after my weekend in Loja, I appreciate having a place that I know fairly well. When I got off the bus I knew just where to tell the taxi driver to take me, where to eat lunch, where to go for the internet, where to sit and read my book, etc. It is a really nice city and I will miss the comfort of familiarity, but I am also very excited to be heading to Peru. I´m really interested to see how it compares to Ecuador. I´m maybe more excited to see Carolyn than Machu Picchu, though. It has been exactly two months today since I left and it will be nice to see a friend.