The tales of Cuenca Continue

Hola! Two weeks of Spanish in an immersion school was really work. Today is our last lesson and we move on for another three weeks of recovery in the jungle, mountains, and rain Forrest.

I love this city. We have eaten like royals, seen fantastic classical concerts, hiked, and visited cultural sites. The Cuencanos are wonderful people who really take pride in their clean city.

First, a word about learning Spanish. Gay and I started at the same level, but soon discovered one of us has great linguistic skills; alas, the other gets good laughs from waiters when ordering anything but beer. I will let you guess who can charm young men into kissing her on the cheek in museums, dance with a tango king and negotiate the purchase of medicino. The school was very difficult and at the end of the day both of us are really tired.

Cuenca is surrounded by mountains. The Parque Cayes is a national park located at around 11,000 to 12,000 feet. It has over 300 lakes and remarkable views. There are more species of humming birds in residence than in the entire United States and Canada. The flora is very interesting with weird desert like plants abounding. You can really feel the altitude and I experienced a little scorche (altitude sickness).

We also visited Girone Falls National Park. There are three falls much higher than the falls in the Columbia Gorge. We climbed up to the base of the falls; I stripped to my shorts and walked underneath the pounding cascade. Our guide, Marta, drank the water and so did I with unfavorable results.

Speaking of gastrointestinal problems....Well in Lima, I got up in the middle of the nights and chugged a glass of water. I waited to explode, but did not. The water fall cocktail did the damage. Cipro is a great drug and I now am back to eating real food. Purchasing Cipro (a broad range antibiotic) was a good experience. It cost me $45 in West Linn and I had to talk an unnamed medical professional into writing a prescription. Here it costs $11 (for six more pills) and no prescription is required. The drug salesman and the pharmacist who gave me the pills were astounded when I shared this information. Why does it cost so much more for the same drug. How many of our seniors and poor simply go without so the drug companies can score.

On to Inca sites. We visited Incapirca, an Inca outpost on the Inca Trail between Cusco and Quito. This was the tenth site I visited this year and I am coming to know the Inca culture for what it really was: twisted. There are always sacrificial stones where young women were murdered. The temples to the sun are abudant. The stone block architecture does not cease to amaze. They were only in power for a little more than 100 years and their empire was destroyed quickly by the nasty Spanish conquistadors.

The company on these trips is what makes them interesting. The students attending our school are a mixed lot and have fascinating stories to share.

More stories to come: Miguel, our teacher walking to work three hours as a young teacher in the mountains. Gay dances the Tango in a small club.
Rachmaninoff is played by a Russian star in a 16 the century cathedral. Movies on channel 18 include The Bandit and pictures inside my bank. As Dorothy said, "There´s no place like home!

Cuenca City of Light and Rain

October 11, 2005 Hotel St. Lucia, Cuenca Ecuador
I sit in the courtyard of a beautiful 17 century Spanish mansion about a block from the Cathedral in Cuenca. We enrolled at the Simon Bolivar Language School and begin our two week course tomorrow. Cuenca has a 300,000 population and sits at about 2,500 meters (7,500 ft.). The Centro is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of the plethora of Colonial era churches. The Ecuadorian consider it their most beautiful city.

You can drink the water, eat the salads and enjoy international cuisine. The professional men in our hood dress better than any lawyer in Oregon City, even Jeff Munns. We will be here for about 12 more days and I hope the rain stops. It is typical mountain June weather: unpredictable and variable.

Yesterday was a long and amusing day. Tumbes was not a gringo town. In fact, I have not seen an American or heard English spoken (unless solicited by us) in two days. Tumbes was a garrison town on the Ecuador-Peru border. There is only one flight a day into the desolate airport. Everything is grey, but the people were great. We ate in a small restaurant for $3 and had a big bowl of soup, egg and mata tea (Gays stomach does better with the leaf of the coca helping).

Our odyssey north began with a taxi ride to the border with two an expediter and his young driver who managed to get lost on a back street which made Tijuana in the 60s look like the entry to the Vatican Gardens. The teaming masses line the border selling and trading. We needed to walk across the border with our guide to a bus station with a bus going to Cuenca. Pigs, chickens and refuse marked our path. My sandals seemed like inappropriate attire. As Gay said, "Chuck, just how many West Linn wives would do this on their vacation?" Well, Leona Greeen might enjoy this after a few drinks I thought, (but did not utter a word). I was a little perplexed, but as fate would have it another bus awaited which we thought would whisk us to Cuenca.

We traveled through the coastal plains, banana plantations, and up into the Alta Plano (the high mountain area). The skys cleared and we passed small Alp like farms. We listened to six hours of Ecuadorian Rap, which all sounds the same to me and enjoyed the ride. Then the inside bus tire exploded, the jack did not work, and after about an hour another bust arrived to take us the Cuenca in a driving rainstorm.

Remarkably, we enjoyed the day and decided to check into about the best accommodation in Cuenca to celebrate our survival. Getting to just meet people, see the country and keep a good attitude are worth the effort for me.

The spell checker is in Espanola so bear with this draft....Wish most of my friends were here.

Lima Rocks (at least more than expected)!

We arrived in Lima, Peru after about 24 hours of flying on October 6, 2005. Gay knew she was having fun when asked to dance by a very young guy in the park last night. We went out to eat, almost fashionably late for old folks and found a large group of people gathered in the Kennedy Park, an urban meeting ground. Was it a political demonstration? Did we need to hide? Nada. It was a weekly gathering of people aged 50 to 80 plus who enjoy listening to live dramatic poetry reading, torch singers, and dancing to tango, salsa and waltz music. It was wonderful to hear poetry read so dramatically. I could understand only a few words: butterfly, fire, love, life, but the meaning was clear. We ended up joining this tribal event watching people have a genuinely wholesome evening.

We then went to eat on a tourist street lined with outdoor restraints, much like Paris, but there were hookers plying their trade nearby. The food is wonderful: cebecia, conch, trout (trucks) etc. It is all fresh and I feel as if I am growing fins. A regular dose of Pisco Sour which seems like a combination of grappa and a White Russian has helped with digestion.

We intended to hide from the criminals in Lima and generally just recuperate from a very long flight. Alas, this has turned out to be a good transit point. Our boutique hotel, antique Milafores, was a mansion in an upscale district called Milafores. It has beautiful antique, colonial era furnishings and costs $89 USD per night. We consider this a splurge.

We took a bus tour of Lima. It is a huge city with lots of traffic and over 200,000 taxi cabs. A ride across town costs about $2. We visited catacombs in the Franciscan monastery. There are lots of skulls, tibias, a fibuals of the previously rich. The convent is full of 17th Century art. Those brothers knew how to suppress people. We also spent a morning at a wonderful anthropology museum. There is a rich history long before the Inca´s spent their 100 plus years as an imperial people.

Near our place is a long walk above the Pacific, the Malarone. It is Saturday and people are enjoying parasailing, walking, skateboarding, rollerblading and hanging out. The weather is perpetually gloomy and foggy, but it almost never rains (just likAutsen stadiummmm).

I was really afraid of this city after spending the night in the airport last December en route to Cusco. The travel books and movies all seem to paint it as a dirty place; alas, it is remarkably clean, the people seem very friendly and we are having a good time.....so far.

Tomorrow we head for Tumbes, which is along the Ecuadorian border. It is described as a mosquito ridden, hot border town. Well, if we are lucky it will only be a border town. Adios, Chuck

Friends Join us On our Journey

Lima Peru is mui Buena! I am working off of a Spanish keyboard so please bear with me. Why blog? We are on a journey of discovery and want to share our experiences with our dear friends. There are three aspects to travel: planning (we have done more than our share of dreaming); the actual visit; and sharing the experience. We hope you can help us enjoy our adventure by commenting and providing your insights. I plan to download pictures as we load them on disks. Just creating this blog is a journey in itself, so hang on here we go.