Cuenca

I love Cuenca! It's probably my favorite city in Ecuador. I'm a sucker for the beautiful cobble streets, the beautiful churches and the panaderia (bread/dessert) shops on every corner. I met up with my friend Amy, who I originally met while volunteering on that farm in Vilcabamba. She is a really funny and out going girl and makes a great traveling companion. Although, we are so different in some aspects we have a lot in common.

Amy my favorite travel companion

The first day in Cuenca we went to a Musuem called Banco Central. It had some really cool ruins behind the actual building. At night, we hung out with a young German guy. There seem to be so many Germans traveling. Anyway, he was an interesting sort of character. He was 18 years old and on a pretty high horse about himself. He wanted to talk about German history (seems like every German I've met along the way wants to do this). When my friend Amy and I couldn't really converse on that particular topic.....besides knowing about Hitler, he started on about how poor the education was in the US. Which I can´t totally disagree with but after about 20 minutes of this and how Germans know at least three languages and so many Americans only know one and yada yada yada.....that conversation was becoming tiresome. So, we cut that evening short.

Part of the ruins behind the museum

Over the next couple of days, Amy and I visited several of the markets in town, went to the Museum of Modern Art, a hat museum and met up with some friends that Amy had previously met in Vilcabamba. While in one of the markets we met an interesting Ecuadorian fellow by the name of Coconut Man. He had a Tagua jewelry shop and was very eager to talk to us about the history of Tagua and how it´s used to make handicrafts. The material used comes from the tagua palm tree which grows in the swampy parts of the forests. The nut or fruit is left to dry out in the sun for a few weeks and then the interior turns into palm ivory which is then carved into jewelry, figurines, chess pieces, buttons, or other useful things. The best part about the tagua is that its harvest brings an economic use to the rainforest and therefore helps protect them.

Nut from the tagua palm

Jewelry made from Tagua

Coconut Man

Hat Museum

From Cuenca, Amy and I took an overnight 8 hr bus to Quito and then another 2 hr bus onto to Mindo.  The town known as the Cloud Forest. I´ll fill you in my time here next time as well as upload some pictures onto the previous posts!