The Museum and Cuencanos

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There is a really large museum in Cuenca called Museo Banco Central. The museum is meant to capture the history of Ecuador from the time of ancient civilizations to now. So my roommate and I went, and this museum is huge. There were three floors of pictures, artifacts, paintings, clothing, and even shrunken heads. I am still a little fuzzy as to why Ecuadorian’s shrunk heads, but it has something to do with making sacrifices to the gods. In addition to the three floors of the museum inside, there are also ruins outside of the museum, a flora/fauna observatory and a bird observatory. In total it took us about 3 hours to go through the entire thing. The inside of the museum was interesting, but the outside was gorgeous. It was pretty amazing to see such natural beauty and such old ruins right in the middle of the city. If it was in the states we would have bulldozed over it and built a Wal-Mart. This is one of the things I love about Ecuador. Even though it is a modern city, they still allow a lot of room for culture, history and tradition.
As for something that has been slightly less than enjoyable in Ecuador, is the small amount of racism. I can completely understand why Ecuadorians may not care for Americans. There are a lot of Gringos coming to Ecuador with a lot of money and buying real estate, so this causes their real estate prices to go up. However, Ecuadorians are not actually making more money to compensate for the change. In addition, Ecuador recently changed their currency to the American dollar and that has caused a large amount of inflation in Ecuador. Anyway, there has been one instance where a friend of mine literally could not get a cab. Empty cabs continued to pass him even thought he was trying to flag them down. In another instance, one of my friends was trying to buy a candy bar on a bus, and the man would not sell it to her. He literally asked every single person on the bus, but would not look at us. So, nothing terrible, but just interesting moments like that. If I compare it to how Latin Americans are treated in America, I really can’t complain.

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