Fun stuff in Cuenca

This past week we have been up to some fun stuff:

About 20 minutes out of town is a national park called Cajas. It is up around 12 000 feet elevation which makes hiking/ running a bit difficult but we managed to walk around up there for about 6 hours.

It actually looks like there might be some decent alpine climbing up there as the rock is solid granitic gneiss that does form some cracks. However, without climbing gear we had to chase Alpacas around. Not too bad.

We went to an Argentinian dance show. There was ballet, folk dancing, and tango. I thought the dancers were around 18-25 years old, but Megan thought they were much younger. It wasn't super professional but it was fun to see. These guys worked their asses off to put this show together.

On Saturday we adopted a kid. Look at this little Tiger. What a great one. Oh wait. We just borrowed him for a few minutes from Megan's super good friend from college, Kathleen. This is Sam and for me it has been very interesting hanging out with a 5 month old on an almost daily basis. This is maybe the third time in my life that I have held a kid and it isn't quite as hard as I thought it would be. They squirm a bit and sometimes poo, but when they aren't hungry they can be pretty fun.

As many know, I am terrified of kids but since there may be one in our future (not anytime real soon) I have to get used to the idea. Being around a kid has been both good and bad for me. Good: I am now more familiar with what it takes to rear a baby which makes it easier to accept. Bad: It is a full on commitment. 24 hours a day. Yikes! When will there be time for motorcycle riding?
Then, after a walk around the city with Kathleen and Sam, we went out to a delicious meal and then not quite wanting to go home we walked around the city a bit more. As we passed by the football (soccer) stadium we noticed that there was a game going on. We bought 6 dollar general admission tickets and watched Cuenca play Manta.

We arrived at the end of the first half and this being Cuenca, there was no score board to figure out what was going on. Not knowing the word for "score," and after the first five minutes feeling too shy to ask what the score was (shouldn't we have just known?) we had to use sociological techniques to realize what was going on. We figured out that Cuenca wasn't winning, but they had control of the ball almost the entire time, so they probably weren't losing either. The game ended with no goals witnessed by us so we figured it had to be a draw. Sure enough, after we got home, we learned it was 0-0. I probably shouldn't have been such a chicken and just asked someone, but I was feeling shy of the yellow zone and didn't go there. Bad tourist.

We only have a few days left here until we are reunited with the bikes for the weekend. The plan is to climb a Volcano with Henry, the guy who will be looking after our bikes. I'm pretty excited about that. I have been running every day here so hopefully I won't be sucking too much wind up at 13 000 feet on the mountain.