During our stay in Cuenca we were lucky to be here for Cuenca Days. This year Cuenca celebrated it's 462 anniversary. She looks good for 462.
Everyone we talked to told us to check our Cuenca days, "Cuenca days is fun," "a lot happens during Cuenca days." We of course had no idea what we were supposed to be looking for....Ok, they were right, there were street markets, concerts, and parades, Cuenca days was fun!
Our first event was a night parade. The night of the event we had a choice between the parade, or a choral concert, poor Wyatt got outvoted because 3/4 wanted to check out the parade, which was schedule to begin at 7 pm....in true Ecuadorian standard time the parade began shortly after 8 pm.
The parade had a number of small military and police marching bands, and various different displays going with the theme of "Juegos y Tradiciones (Games, and Traditions)." Here is one that reminded us of that Berenstain Bears book Bears on Wheels, check it out:
Another big tradition in Cuenca is the burning of the Castle. A shop worker told us a few days earlier to come for a castle burning on Thursday night. Well, us Olsons, we are always up for a good burning....this one was pretty intense. It is apparently a tradition that takes place in Cuenca during religious and political celebrations, and this particular one, was small one, or so we heard...
Here are a few more snapshots of Cuenca Days:
Maija found some cool pottery to take home for her dolls
I was NOT going to share my cotton candy, but somehow that felt a little selfish...what do you guys think?
Close up of the castle
In the Mercados you often see people buying quail eggs, we had never tried them, so here was our chance. They tasted really good, pretty close to chicken eggs really. The kids each had to have one too. We are terribly mean, and make them try everything we try.
Quail egg vendor, 10 cents/egg.
The sign read "Support the arts in Otavalo, buy a bracelet" it was cool to see this guy weave a bracelet in around a minute.
This dish is called Japingachos. I did not know it would come with all this food. The potato part was pretty yummy, but the sausage did not look or taste too appetizing to me, so far Mercado food has always been yummy....you can't win them all.
Ok, a large part of Cuenca Days involved trying different foods....Below was a cooler of "Helados de Paila" Some street home made ice cream.
The sign read in English "they prepare a liquid with fruits of the forest, and sometimes with fresh milk.".....only sometimes?!?
For our last Saturday here in Arequipa we decided to visit the Santa Catalina Convent. The convent is located in the historic center of Arequipa and it is considered the most important and impressive colonial structure in the city. Constructed from Sillar, a white volcanic stone quarried locally, the convent was founded in 1579, and is truly a city within a city. The nuns constructed private cells within the convent where they could lead isolated lives, protected by high walls sheltering them from the surrounding city. Most museums, or tourist sites here in Peru encourage you to have a guide, normally we prefer to do it without one, but this structure was so large, and with so much history, that I am glad we opted to have a guide show us the place. One of the many alleys within the Convent. Each street within the convent is named after a Spanish city, I think this one might have been Malaga.
Our time in Cusco has at last come to a close; it has been a wonderful month, both seeming to have gone quickly and slowly at the same time. Trying to remember back a month ago to our life in Calgary seems like another lifetime. For our last Saturday hike, we finally made it up to Templo de la Luna, which Monica, Maija, and I had attempted but failed to reach back on November 14th. It is a small-ish set of ruins, but quite pretty with an interesting set of caves (which were unfortunately mostly cordoned off, although you could look through them). One of the caves which you could actually enter. There is a large altar here, similar to the one at Q'enqo
I wanted to write a little about some of the people we have met here in Cusco. As I have mentioned before we are lucky to find fast friends in our local church congregation. We still have one more Sunday here in Cusco and thought we would take the opportunity then to say good bye to our friends and take pictures too. Well, at the end of our church meeting we found out that next week church is cancelled all over Peru due to elections. Apparently a lot of shops, and churches do not meet since people have to travel back to vote in their designated areas, and no one goes to church anyway, thus we were not able to get pictures of all the many people that have shown us kindness here in Cusco, but here are a few: Maija met two really nice girls at church, we could not find Aby, but here is Maija with her friend Flor. They kept asking Maija how to say things in English
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