Finally, we have photos!

The first one is a sign that caught our eye on the way to the airport in Lima.

And below are some from Cuenca.  It truly is a beautiful place, with 52 churches, and beautiful cobblestoned streets in the historic city centre.  Spotlessly clean thanks to the efforts of street sweepers, and remarkably lacking in tourists.  We think that this isnt the busy season as most of the hostels are either empty or have one or two guests.

Below is the New Cathedral, built in the 1800s because the old one wasnt big enough . . . The blue domes are particularly beautiful, the tiles came all the way from Europe.

The contrast between old and new is all around - here is the ambulance depot in the most beautiful old house.

And here is the New Cathedral at night; all the locals hang out on the Plaza de Amas.

  Ecuador is riduculously cheap.  You could eat out breakfast, lunch and dinner for US$6.  The market with fruit, vegetables and meat is incredible.  We only took cellphone pics as we were the only gringos there and felt a little conspicuous without pulling out the big camera!  However everyone is lovely and we bought lots of delicious fruit.  Everywhere makes fresh fruit juice for you - I love piña (pineapple) and Ben loves mora (blackberry).

Cuenca is 2500m in altitude and on Saturday we went up to Parque Nacional Cajas.  You can take a guided tour for $40 each, or you can catch the bus for $2!  The bus ride was fun, the driver and his assistant were very helpful in telling us where to get off.  Where the bus stopped had a whole herd of llamas, sadly only captured on the cellphone camera.

The park headquarters are at 3900m!  We felt fine walking downhill or on the flat, but there was a lot of puffing heading uphill!

It is a truly beautiful area, very austere.  Also mucho frio (very cold!)  We ambled round the lake in the background and saw one big bird (I say it was a condor, Ben isnt convinced).  A couple of hawks, smaller birds and a quick glimpse of a hummingbird.

Now we are staying with a lovely Ecuadorian family in Cuenca while we learn Spanish.  On Sunday all 7 of us crammed in their Suzuki Vitara and went to Chordeleg, which has the most jewellery stores we have ever seen in once place.  I bought some earrings - there was so much choice it was overwhelming.

Then the family took us to the local foodhall where we tried some local dishes - ham & cheese toasties with a milkshake.  Of course in español it sounds far more exotic :-)  We also tried humitas (maize things) and some kind  of tortilla - delicious.  Monica kept talking about cuy (roast guinea pig) but we werent enthusiastic so luckily she didnt buy us any.

PS: español keyboards are a bit of a pain, apologies for all typos and lack of apostrophes.