Ahh, beautiful Cuenca, finally the sun comes out and warms us up!  It has been mucho frio (very cold) here the last couple of days, so much so that we have been contemplating wearing our down jackets.  Luckily it hasn't come to this and today it was deliciously warm in the sun.

Tonight is our last night with our homestay family.  They have been so wonderful and welcoming, though I could  cheerfully strangle the neighbour's rooster, which insists on crowing from about 3am onwards.  Go earplugs.  But the warmth and hospitality has been amazing from Monica, Gabby, Belen and Christian.

Our Spanish is slowly improving, we are getting very good at answering questions starting with "En Nueva Zelanda . . ."

We thought we should reciprocate with some Kiwi hospitality of our own, so currently in the oven there is a pavlova - Katie I will let you know if your recipe works at high altitude and with not quite right ingredients!

Friday and Saturday night we are back to a hostel in town, to return to Cajas Park on Sat, then on to Baños on Sunday.  We will do some more Spanish classes there, plus more walking.

Here are some more mobile photos - all we needed was a jam jar . . .

Pic 1: Ben and a new friend at Cajas, where we disembarked from the local bus.

We spent about an hour in the supermercado today buying all the pav ingredients.  On our rambles we also found some entertaining names:

The supermercado had everything.  Literally everything.  Motorbikes and scooters included.  We love supermercados in Ecuador, you never know what you might find.

P.S: Very exciting news!  I've found the apostrophe key!