Water goes down the toilet the other way

The plan was such: Go to Cuenca, Hang out with Megan's friend Kathleen, Find an apartment, Take spanish classes, Let megan heal. And that is pretty much how it has gone.

Cuenca is a city of 300,000 people situated amongst rushing rivers at 8000 feet elevation. There are lovely churches, cobbled roads, aggressive taxi drivers, and lots of green spaces. We wake from our 6th floor apartment every morning to either the sounds of church bells (they start at 7 am) playing lovely rhythms or to rockets (they also start at 7 am) with very loud firecrackers attached. I'm still not sure why people fire off rockets at 6 am and why they are always in pairs but apparently monday at 7 am is good time for fireworks. Why not?

So we are learning Spanish at a good clip in order to forget it again when we go back to the States on June 2nd. Hopefully we can find a place to speak a little Spanish this summer. We do, however, have return tickets to Colombia on January 3rd which is apparently in the middle of a big holiday for them. Lots of water splashing and rejoicing.

Life in Cuenca

[view from out apartment] So what is life like in Cuenca? Well… generally speaking, We get up around 7:00, make some coffee, read a little news on the internet and do our Spanish homework. Then we go to class at 10:30. For the sake of our marriange, we have separate classes in the morning. For two hours, we are crammed full of grammar rules and new words that we would quickly forget if it weren't for the two hours of conversation class that we take together in the afternoon. During the lunch break, we head out to the market and I eat from the entire roasted pig that is so mouth wateringly displayed. Yumm. (Megan doesn't enjoy the pig so much).

After the afternoon classes, I might put on my running shoes and head out for a nice run along the river. At first, going for a run at 8000 feet proved difficult, but my heart is warming up a bit and I can run 10k in a little under an hour. Maybe my lack of any upper body muscle mass helps me to run, but I doubt it since beer is so cheap here and I have countered the muscles with a little panzita. Never fear, one of the things I really look forward to when we return to Seattle is hitting the Vertical World climbing gym with ferocity in order to get back into shape for the summer climbing season.

I digress… For dinner we cook up a lovely meal in our 1980's Miami Beach decorated apartment and then maybe go out for a stroll through the town to let the food settle in. The markets here have amazing produce, meats, and the pastas are locally made and quite yummy.

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This past weekend, we took a 3 hour bus ride south to Ñamarin, a little Indigenous community that our fried Kathleen has connections to. We stayed in a very small guest house, had meals cooked for us by the family that runs it, went for a long hike through the countryside, were treated to a little dance performance by the local kids, and ate Cuy.

Cuy is a very nutritious, delicious tasting, and easy to grow meat. We, of course, know it as our beloved Guinea Pig, but here they are merely livestock. It tasted a lot like rabbit but maybe a bit smoother. My first impression was that it was very oily, but when I ask around about Cuy, they say it is very low in Cholesterol and has only the good kind of fat... whatever that is. Anyway. It was good.

Incidentally, I usually feel very uncomfortable doing ethnic things like watching dance performances that are put on for us because we are tourists. It goes into the category of "culture as a zoo" where one watches cultures as if one were at a zoo rather than just participate in culture. The latter takes a bit more time and can put one deep into the yellow zone. However, when half the town came by the little guest house/ community center to watch the performance I felt a bit better. These kids were doing this because they have been practicing and wanted to show off what they knew rather than dancing for the tourists because it is what the we requested (we didn't request it). It was even requested by Jose, the proprietor of the guest house (it is owned by the community) and the first University trained indigenous doctor in the region, that we could make a donation to the dancers so that they could buy more uniforms and necessities for dancing.

It was refreshing to see an indigenous community that is thriving in modern times but not at the sacrifice of their culture and family. They live in a fantastic area in small family units, grow their own food and share responsibilities as a community. And... the men all wear Man-pris which if anyone knows me, knows I like to wear capris.
This coming weekend, we plan to go up to Cajas which is a national park up at 12,000 feet. I will try to do a long trail run up there, but the elevation may get the best of me.

About the Bikes

[Megan with her good friend Kathleen and her new baby: Samuel] Since this is a motorcycle blog and not a travel blog I should probably write a bit about the bikes. I MISS THEM A LOT. Every time I walk by a tire store or a bike parts store I feel like part of me is missing. I used to always register the last parts store that I saw just in case we would have to go back and visit. Now it doesn't matter.
I miss the freedom that having the bikes gives us. It is hard to get out of town without them.
I miss the celebrity status that bikes sometimes bestow upon us. The bikes are always a great conversation starter with random people and I enjoy that.
I miss riding. It is just so stinking fun. I still feel a rush of excitement every time I sit on Irmtraube and start her up.
This doesn't mean that I'm not grateful for what we do have, which is a healthy Megan and a great experience in Cuenca. Things could be a lot worse. It feels so very un-zenful of me to have attachments to things like the bikes and I try to reposition my thoughts towards what I do have rather than what I don't have, but sometimes...
In 10 days or so, we will be temporarily reunited with the ladies. Megan still can't ride, but perhaps I can go out for a little tour of the area. I will need to find someone to ride with because I don't feel comfortable riding the back roads of Colombia without a Colombian nearby. No need to end the trip with a kidnapping (Mom, that one is for you).

About Megan's Health

This post certainly wouldn't be complete without a little update about Megan's condition. Her hip and knee bruises have all but healed up.
She can now write with her right hand without pain and besides the bruise that is slowly making its way down her chest it might be hard to tell that she even had an accident. We will keep her in the figure eight brace for a full 6 weeks (it has been 3) and keep the movement down to a minimum but when we went and got xrays and chatted with a doctor (for 50 dollars) about it all, he said that it's doing fine.

This x-ray shows where her bones are now.
Thank you everyone for your concern and your comments after the accident. It really means a lot to us to hear from you all and know that you are concerned.

Toilets

This video shows why I titled this post as such. Go look at your toilet and see the difference. Pretty cool, huh?

Walking home with Pero the Plant which we bought off a little guy on the street for 50 cents.

Megan in the garden of the Modern Art Museum.

I got up early one Sunday and walked around the town before the fireworks and taxis got crazy.

Getting some meat from the meat guy.

Our favorite grain- Quinoa- grows like crazy here.

Lambs are incredibly cute.