Weekend Adventures!

This weekend we had many adventures. Saturday started with a trip to some indigenous ruins. The ruins were partially from the Canary tribe that inhabited the area for thousands of years and partially from the Incans who overthrew the Canaries shortly before the Spanish arrived and wiped out the Incans.

Us in front of the ruins

Temple to the sun

Another view of the ruins

Our next adventure, still on Saturday, was to ride a train to the "Nose of the Devil". It is a mountain that looks like a nose, but what is significant is that they were building a train to connect Quito (the capital) to Cuenca (where we are, largest city in the south), but this mountain has such steep walls that the train had to twice double back in order to complete the trip. Now it is a tourist trap, but it was lots of fun and very beautiful!

The nose of the devil... do you see it? I don't...

Supposedly the forehead is to the right, nostrils would be in back....

Emma on our train with the devil's nose in the background

Josiah on the train with the devil's nose in the background

Us in front of our train

Us on the train... not sure why it is a screen shot...

This is the town we caught the train in

After preforming the native dance, they picked several from the audience to dance.

Should Tyler be worried? 

We got home late and slept very well that night. The next morning, Sunday, was our day to explore the parks of Cuenca. We walked almost 10 miles (a good amount in the heavy rain), but got to see some amazing parks and enjoy playing on several playgrounds! Lots of pictures here

Josiah and Emma loved playing

One park had a 6 story tower to look out over the city.

Nicole and Tyler with the Catholic University in the background

All of us with the Catholic University in the background

View of the city on the other side of the tower

Josiah and Emma in another park

They found these stumps everywhere!

One park had a walk through flowers and trees

A beautiful view and a great walk

Us on the walk through flowers and trees

Another adventure, not from the weekend, but from early in the week of classes, Josiah got to sing "Voy a Vivir" by Marc Anthony for the entire school (he is practicing future tense). No video because my camera did not have any space... but we did catch a picture

Josiah signing for the school

And, because the last two posts did not include any food, I thought I should include some today. A delicacy in Ecuador is the eat "cuy". It is like chicken - only sweeter... so they say. We decided it was not good at all and had way to many bones. Oh, forgot to let you know, "cuy" is Ginny Pig. They don't use them as pets, they raise them to eat. Enjoy the food pics:

He is looking at me.... 

This is how they cook the Ginny Pig - Rotisserie style