2006-12-29T11:13:00.000-08:00

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Soo after that gorgeous train ride, I am finally in Cuenca... This time with a bunch of friends, one of them being Turkish, this is one of the coolest stuff that can happen in Ecuador... Cuenca immediately gained my vote for my favorite city in Ecuador.. Its old city is absolutely gorgeous... The architecture itself is not only cool but also the city itself has this atmosphere that Quito didn´t have... It is much safer than Quito and Guayaquil (The largest city in Ecuador), and also more of a city of arts and crafts and has this intellectual air within...

We chose our hostel very well positioned in the center of cuenca only a block away from the new cathedral, and being on the 6th floor giving gorgeous views for the cathedral....

This is my new friend whom I met with Senol at the same time. Meet Swenja, who has been travelling ecuador for 2.5 months by herself by that time (they had been travelling together for a few days). She is a cool girl, small but able to carry her own luggage and totally durable =).. Has excellent sense of orientation and she will be working on tourism when she gets back to Germany ( good choice).. I have seen her travel plan and her pictures, I totally respect the way she travels... Saying hi to her from here and good luck in the rest of your trip...

After spending some time seeing the museums city etc. I hit for the city center and the old cathedral, another cool cathedral with a few pictures here... ( I believe I will not be putting any cathedral pictures anymore if I go on like this for a few more weeks =)...

Then I meet Evellyn (left) and Valleria, two sisters from Cuenca... They are really helpful guides, they show me their college (which is the one in the background in the first picture =P ), and then show me a little bit more of around.... Just as I was thinking we are done (I had seen most of the city already),, they call for this cool guy friend of them, Sebastian... He comes by his car and just stops near us... I normally don´t go to every car that stops near me, yet they look too cute and innocent to be of serious danger, and I trust my instincts.. Man could I be any more right!!!! Sebastian is an excellent guide, he is 28, he has his own family company working on insurance business. He is entrepreneurial, cool, helpful and nice.. He takes us to an excellent vista of the city by car, which I believe is way off the beaten tourist path in Cuenca... And then on our way back for buying some ecuadorian fruits (There is no way I am leaving the country without trying the amazing variety) we see our good old friend Swenja.. She is surprised seeing me going out of a car in the middle of the road, yet she has good instincts too and she jumps in too...

Swenja is vegetarian and the rest are not hungry but they are soo nice that they don´t reject my wish to eat a cuy (Guinea Pig)!!!!! Don´t get the wrong impression from the name they have nothing to do with pigs (which is shown in the second picture =) )... My mouth is already watered... These guys are something in between rabbits and rats!!!! (Closer to rabbits =) They are specific to Ecuador, and they are illegal to eat in USA and some other countries as they are too cute...=)... The locals eat it and I have my oath to eat anything:
i) the locals can eat

ii) is not pork

iii) is at least partially hygienic (see the explanation on ChiCha in Peru)
And in the last picture I eat it with all my appetite, it is tasty and it tastes sort of like rabbit... I am not sure if it tastes like a rat, unfortunately they don´t eat them here... Maybe I will know when I am in China=).. And the third picture is a closer image to how they look like in real life (with fur of course)... Soo, one of them died because of me, I am a carnivore and proud of it=P

And of course I will try all the fruits that I can try....

I really need to ask the names of the fruits to Sebastian again, as I really do not know what they are called (I thought I knew them correctly but when I checked on google images, it turned out that I knew most of them wrong)... But I can at least say that the one yellow in the middle on the first image, which is also the one I am eating on the second image, is called pepino, and is absolutely awesome.... It has this taste of water melon and is really really juicy, I absolutely loved it there... Sebastian, know that I will contact you when I go back to Turkey...

Some other names of the fruits probably not here yet I still got the names of (world has way too much varieties,,, good for me =) ) Guava, Naranjilla and Granadilla

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My Cuenca