The Dirt Cricket Abides

Up to this point I have been generally down on Ecuador. Cuenca was a massive relief and saved face on Ecuador for me.

First off the city is clean. The sight of trash did not constantly assault me, as it seemed to everywhere else in Ecuador. Another nice part about Cuenca is that there is a very nice blend of Colonial Architecture and modern flair. Another nice part about the city of Cuenca is that there is a blend of both French and Spanish influence. It’s quite obvious as you wander around the city that it is one that promotes and fosters any form of art. In fact every art museum in Cuenca is free.

Now the only downer is that I am now dealing with illness number two. I am back to spiking a fever and rolling with a sore throat. In fact it blew up into full on strept throat…thank god I was carrying my sack of antibiotics to clean it all out. I did have to change hostels each night for the first three nights, as I was trying to find a nice place to settle for the two weeks + I planned on spending here. After finally finding the perfect guest house I was happy to have some semblance of a routine enter my life. Spanish classes for 4hours a day one on one with a tutor was a excellent but sobering. I quickly realized that my dreams of full fluency were going to take more than this trip were going to provide. I am certainly going back to the states with much more Spanish than I had ever had in my life and this is something I will not give up on. One day I hope to be fully fluent but the improvements to date are still dramatic.

So an interesting tidbit I learned about Cuenca is that the Panama Hat is actually from here. Where the confusion has stemmed from is that the hats were exported through Panama, hence the moniker we all know. I also found out that Ecuador’s best football team is from Cuenca. Now this is where I had my most memorable experiences…at the football stadium. An English guy in the hostel informed me there was a match for the Copa Liberatadores (South America’s version of the Premiership) between Cuenca and Maracaibo, Venezuela. It was actually a very important match because the loser would be eliminated and could not advance to later stages. Nonetheless, those who have seen football in South America know very well the energy far surpasses any NFL, NBA, NHL, or MLB game. We may get louder through sheer numbers, but I have never seen us form a mamba line and march behind a monster drum, throw water balloons relentlessly (which the cops were convinced came from the gringos) at the opposing team, or light flares and dance like a madman through a packed stadium. Truly we could learn a few things from these fans. I wonder if the pole is too far up the ass of the stadium security in Philly, but I am trying to bring in a 5-foot tall drum next Phillies game. I can still hear the deep thud of the drum and the entire stadium yelling Cuenca! Cuenca! Cuenca! Cuenca!….

I managed to squeak out to see an interesting ruin about 3 hours away form Cuenca. Ingapirica is sitting a couple valleys over and is the largest standing Inca ruin in all of Ecuador. Though the ruins are paltry by Peruvian standards, it is still impressive to see evidence of how this culture was able to dominate the entire Andean mountain range. It was also interesting because the Inca were not bashful…they simply built directly on top of what the Canari Indians had left behind. So you could see rough hewn rock composing the bottom third of the structures and the perfect Inca stonework simply sitting on top of what had once been their culture’s work.

Cuenca also had its host of museums but the most interesting thing I saw were the shrunken heads. Yes folks, the legend is real. There is actually an indigenous tribe in the Amazon where if you cross them they will shrink your head and keep it as a trophy. If you ask me this kind of looks like my friend Adam. While on the mystical topic, I had my aura cleansed by a medicine woman. This consisted of her beating me about the face and upper body with a bundle of herbs (which did make me feel lightheaded), rubbing an egg in a shell all over my body (the egg picks up the bad pieces of my aura), and spitting some sort of alcohol all over me to make sure that I stay protected. It was right out of the movies, but I suppose the big difference is that there was a line of normal looking people waiting for the same to be done to them. While I found it novel and humorous, educated professionals were going through what was a normal weekly routine.

Now just a little culinary side note, until this point the food in Ecuador has basically been sautéed cardboard. If I were lucky the cardboard came with salt. However, Cuenca has this odd specialty of Pork & Turkey sandwiches. They look plain and the sauces look even duller, but if god did not come down and put the flavor of heaven in these seemingly simple sandwiches then I cannot explain what makes them so good. The words will haunt me as I ordered it over dozen times “Un sanduche de pernil y un otro de pavo, y un jugo de coco.” Emmm just wiped the saliva off my chin

Tomorrow I go to Peru!!! Oh and what is considered the most dangerous border in South America…grrrrreat.

Chirp get ready to bribe my first oficial? Chirp

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 15th, 2009 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Ecuador, South America, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.