Is that the sun we see??

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Hi guys! We had much better luck leaving Puerto Lopez. We took a bus and then a short flight to a city in Southern Ecuador called Cuenca. We really love this city! It's an old colonial city with beautiful architecture and cobblestone streets with a big river running through it.

Our luck with the weather has been awful! We went to see the remaining Ingapirca structures and it was cold and it drizzled. Actually, we were disappointed with the whole thing all together. The structures weren't anything special to look at. I guess if you are a history buff it would be worth checking out, but it didn't do much for us. As Dan and I have been saying a lot here in Ecuador, maybe it would have been better if the sun was shining. On the bus ride back we were sent on a detour up through the mountains because of another landslide (we found out later it had something to do with a gold mining company messing up the water). Nothing like in Baños, but still a landslide. We had to go around it in the bus. Dan said to me, "There's nothing like driving on an off-road-vehicle trail in a city bus". It was very bouncy and a bus in front of us got stuck. Loads of fun.

We woke up the next day in Cuenca to the sun blazing and we were so glad. We walked around the city and shopped and ate and looked for velcro. Dan needed some for his camera backpack. We had a good laugh at ourselves trying to describe velcro to people. We actually found some! $0.35 a yard...not bad!

There´s definitely no shortage of sweets in Ecuador. Literally every 20 feet is a shop with pastries, ice cream, or cake. Our plan to tone up a little on our active vacation has back-fired. For lunch the other day we had banana splits.

We are back in Quito now and have had 2 more days of sunshine! Dan and I had so much fun picking out things for the kids at the orphanage. Thanks to the staff at Mason and Trombly Schools where I work in Michigan we were able to get so much stuff! The lady at the orphanage said they mostly needed baby hygiene items as well as school supplies. We got tons of baby wash and shampoo, desitin, q-tips, wipes, etc. We also got tons of crayons, pencils, markers, paint sets, glue, alphabet and number puzzles, things for the teacher, etc. We even had enough left over to buy them fun stuff like stickers, girly hair clips, trucks, basketballs, and legos. Things are so much cheaper here! We went to the orphanage with the stuff and they were very happy. One of the nuns took us on a tour of the orphanage while Louis, our driver, translated for us. There are 110 children there ranging from a few days old up to 18 years old. We didn´t stay long because I always hate to intrude or disrupt. It was nap time for the babies so we didn´t go in that area. There was a little boy, also named Louis, who was following us around. What a cutie. He´s 4 years old and he´s developmentally delayed with minimal speach and he´s just a tiny little thing. Both of his parents have Downs Syndrome. I think he´s eventually going to catch up and be just fine, though. I took him around on the tour with us. It was cute, when I told him my name he said, "NeeKee"!

We leave for Panama tomorrow and we are crossing our fingers for good weather.

I hope all is well and thanks again for the comments!!

Peace,
Nikki & Dan

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Photos

Superman let-down
they played Superman at one of our hostels in our room...too bad it was in spanish and the subtitles were also in spanish

Dan by the river in Cuenca
that´s his bad-ass look :)

Comments

[Mama]

Miss you!
Given the info you have shared so far, I think our plan will be to spend our time in Quito and the areas 2-hours North of Quito, then Cuenca...maybe visit one of the smaller Galapagos Islands, nearest the mainland. Want to hear more about Cuenca, please! My girl -- your orphanage search is most wonderful! All of my friends (that can't see your blog) say hello! Lorna and Skip ask about you, of course. Have a blast in Panama. Can you bring cigars back to the US? Uncles Joe and Ron would love it. Will write you a short personal e-mail later ... hugs, love and go girl! xoxox Mama

[Matt]

Hello (subtitled into English: "Hello")
While I was in Canada once, I was flipping through TV channels at a hotel, and saw a Chinese TV program, in which they were speaking Chinese, that was displaying subtitles (without me asking for them) in Chinese. I found out later that there are two dialects of Chinese (Madnarin and Cantonese, I think) that are spoken vastly different, but written the same. So even if you spoke the other dialect, you could still at least read what they were saying. When I was in Mexico, I found out that the same can sometimes happen with Spanish. Someone from Spain speaks Spanish quite differently from someone in, oh say, Ecuador. Cuba has it's own dialect as well. So that's most likely why the movie was subtitled in Spanish as well. And I always had a blast with that. Being my usual tactful self I always pondered out loud about how stupid that is that people who are speaking the same language are so removed from each other that they can't make heads or tails of what the other guy is saying. And while I don't believe in "karma", this whle thing culminated in: a co-worker of mine with a very deep southern drawl was working with one of our business partners in England, and they could not understand each other. I had to translate for 2 hours. ("Howdy"="Cheerio", "Shyoooot"="Bloody Hell", etc.)