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Hola gente -- I am nearing the end of my stay in Ecuador, and am going to try to put up some of the nicer pictures that have been sitting around in my camera. Hard to believe, but these here are a month old… Most are from Cajas National Park and Cuenca, about 10 hours south of Quito. (Seems like just about everywhere in Ecuador is either 2 hours or 10 hours from Quito.) I’d gone to Cuenca for the city’s independence day festivities, but didn’t really end up seeing them… a group of people I knew from Quito also happened to be there and we ended up going to Ingapirca, Incan ruins a little ways outside of the city. The ruins were OK (it’s always hard for me to imagine where people cooked, slept, made human sacrifices, etc.), but paled in comparison to the park. The park has around 200 lakes and condors and puma, although we didn’t see any. The Swiss folks in the group said the views reminded them of Switzerland.

Most of my friends here have been Swiss or German, and hanging out with them has been pretty interesting. The native language of most of the Swiss is German, but very different from the German spoken in Germany… They said they could barely understand each other when they first met. I’ve picked up a few German words, although “scheisse” (SHY-za) is the only one that really sticks.

More photos soon…

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Photos

Sidonia y Franco
Sidonia is a friend from Spanish school. Franco teaches at another school and, besides me, was the only other non-German speaker.

Cuenca

Cuenca parade
The one Cuenca independence event I made it to...

ms. thang
Every city's independence day seems to come with a beauty pageant. In the Cuenca parade, there seemed to be about 10 Miss Something-or-Others...

que onda, guero
(my friend Bernhard)

outside Cuenca
a little suburb called Banos

Comments

[beautypageant]

too cool
Very pretty views. You're going to hate being back. We had our first snow yesterday. Kinda late, but ... it aint beauty pageant weather at all! -- C*

[anonymous]

The photos are fantastic. It must wonderful to be there and experience those incredible places .