We have been in Cuenca for a week, staying with a lovely local family, and taking Spanish lessons.  Rach is pretty good now, I however, am still struggling.  I have  big problems with pronunciations - particularly with any words containing a “g”, “ll”, “qu”, “c” or “ñ” (so most words really!)  At times in our lessons I felt like a 7 year old learning to read for the first time!

Although Rach did best in the lessons, I did much better with our host family.  Not in terms of Spanish though, but in terms of food.  As you probably know Rach likes her food just as much as me, but our Ecuadorian hosts thought otherwise, and much to her dismay, I was always served meals almost twice the size of hers!  I was also often offered seconds, whereas Rach never was - serves her right for all those meals she made me skip in Colombia!

We’ve both liked being students again for a bit and having a routine to our day.  In hindsight 5 hour lessons may have been a bit too much.  I generally lost concentration after about an hour and a half, Rach faired a bit better and lasted about 4 hours, but we were both exhausted in the afternoons.  The only thing we had energy to do for our homework was to go to the cinema and watch a film.  OK so the films were in English but they had Spanish subtitles!  When we went out for a few beers on Friday we felt like we had really earned them.

We stayed in Cuenca for 8 nights, more than twice as long as any other place so far.  We enjoyed the longer stay; being able to unpack our bags and have a bit of a routine.  Interestingly though by the end of our stay we were both getting restless to move on – we are obviously not ready to return to work just yet.

Exciting as it was, Spanish school didn’t yield many photo opportunities, so here are a few misfits of other stuff we have been up to:

Rob milking a cow, Posada de Tigua

Rach riding a llama, Posada de Tigua

Posada de Tigua, Quilotoa Loop

Rob at Laguna Quilotoa

Pilion del Diabolo, Banos

... With a rainbow

Volcan Chimborazo

Mountain biking down Volcan Chimborazo

New cathedral, Cuenca

New cathedral door, Cuenca