Cuenca

i think i am going to be a vegetarian again after this trip. there is a lot of really disgusting meat that i've been eating lately. when i translate for clyde in restaurants, i tell him there is "meat" on the menu, but then he wants to know what kind, so i tell him "steak" to let him know that it's from a cow, but then when the food comes out, he says, "this is not steak! this is scraps!"
when you see the "carnecarias", which translates to "meat store" it's easy to understand why i continue to be plagued by stomach/intestinal problems. lately i've been thinking about life post trip, and i'm really looking forward to not being sick all the time.

Since arriving in Ecuador we have been doing a lot of climbing. the scenery is breathtaking. all day long we struggle up and down volcanoes, which can be exhausting, but is also incredibly rewarding. the other day peter broke his "land speed record" at 51 mph.
Lonely Planet says that the panamerican highway to Cuenca wasn't paved until the 1960s, however there still remain many unpaved sections, some with grades as steep as 10%. going uphill was quite a challenge, then the fog moved in.
i don't think i could see more than 50 feet in front of me, and i worried that cars wouldn't see me at all. as we continues to climb higher, i realized we were actually climbing through a cloud not fog. eventually we climbed higher than the clouds could see them filling up the vally below us. as we rounded the corner, the view changed again, and most of the clouds were stuck on the other side of the volcano. i never get bored of looking at all the crazy scenery. it's so different than california. mountains of this magnitude just don't exist in the bay area.

Tonight is new years eve. Ecuadorians celebrate new years very differently than we do. it's almost like if halloween was celebrated by adults making politcal statements through public sculpture and performance art. i don't understand a lot of the messages as i know almost nothing about ecuadorian politics and my spanish isn't that great. this one shows bush hanging off of a helicopter, while ecuadorians try and sneak across the US/Mexico border while being shot at by border patrols. on the right is a boat with immigrants that says, "titanic" on the side. these scenes block off entire city streets, and then the people who create them send out a person to collect money from the cars that pass by. usually the money collectors are wearing crazy outfits like sheep skin body suits and gorilla masks, or they're dressed in drag booty dancing for all the traffic. it's pretty wild. anyhows, i hope everyone is having an awesome new years! love,
-jessie