Goodbye, Cuenca.

Okay, I know I've been incredibly delinquent when it comes to posting to the blog. I apologize. I think it's a combination of not having enough internet access, being busy, and being depressed that my trip was coming to an end. In any event, here are my updates for my last few weeks in Ecuador.

Upon my return from Vilcabamba, I had only one week left in Cuenca. Every week I spent in Cuenca made the place feel a bit more like home, so I knew this last week was going to be hard. I also had several things I wanted to do before I left, so it was a fairly busy week.

My first night back, I had dinner with the Frenchies at El Jordan, a Middle Eastern restaurant. It was by far the most expensive meal I had in Ecuador (a whopping $19 per person), but we had a lot of wine and appetizers, and we stayed for a while, so it was worth it. The food was great, and the view of Cuenca was even better. Plus, it was wonderful to spend some time with the Frenchies alone. And, because it was just me, we spoke Spanish the entire night. And when we weren't speaking Spanish, we were speaking French. Either way, it was all practice for me, which is always a good thing.


That night, Frenchie #2 and I made plans to meet up the next morning in the plaza to go to museums together. While I was waiting for her the next morning, I took a couple of pictures of the big cathedral in the plaza:


Our first stop was the Museo del Sombrero, where we learned about Ecuadorian hat-making practices. It's a tiny museum, so we were there for less than an hour, but it was interesting nonetheless.
At the end of our tour of the museum, the employee took us to the roof of the building, which offered incredible views of Cuenca:

We also stayed for coffee in their little cafe, which featured coffee from all over Ecuador:


Next, we went to the museum of aboriginal art. This was, again, a very small museum, so we weren't there for long.

After our museum visits, we met up with the rest of the gang for lunch at one of our favorite vegetarian restaurants:

Left to right, it's Taylor, Melissa (from Seattle), Josh (from Seattle), Marie (from Germany), and the Frenchies.

After lunch, it was off to Spanish classes for me. On this particular day, my teacher took me to one of the local marketplaces to observe a local ritual. On Tuesdays and Fridays, elderly women in the marketplaces perform cleansing rituals called "limpiar." These rituals are said to rid people of the evil eye, and are performed on people of all ages. The women wave bunches of various plants all over the person and they spit on them as well. This is obviously something the people of Ecuador believe in, because the lines to see the women were huge, and the older the woman was, the longer the line and the more expensive the service.

On Thursday, I visited the museum of modern art, which was close to my hostel and next to another beautiful plaza.

On Friday, I went to the Museo de Banco Central (I told you it was a busy week!). This is the biggest, and most well done museum in Cuenca. It features art, architecture, and cultural displays of the various cultures of Ecuador. Here's a portrait of Simon Bolivar, the namesake of my school and a major street in just about every city in Ecuador:

And here are some other pictures from the museum:

This was also my last week with Miguel, my Spanish instructor in Cuenca. He was wonderful, and I will miss our conversations dearly. Apart from teaching me to speak Spanish, he taught me so much about Ecuador and Ecuadorian culture (and I taught him about American football!), and he was an incredibly patient and caring instructor whose love for his work came across every day.

Well, that's it for Cuenca. Now that my trip to Ecuador is over, I can honestly say that Cuenca is my favorite city in Ecuador, if not in Latin America. I would even go as far as to say that it's a livable city (and coming from a New Yorker, that means a lot!). I was so depressed to leave Cuenca, but knowing I was on my way to Quito for fiestas helped. More on that to follow...