October 19: Pumapungo

This beautiful, amazing park is about a 25 minute walk from our house. Cuenca is an interesting geographical place. High in the Andes, it has indengineous people that traveled from Peru (the Incas) and various tribes that moved from the Amazon or the coast. In Cuenca (and in surrounding areas) the Incas and the Canaris combined their worship of sun and moon, agricultural knowledge, and genetic material (sadly, the Incas had a tradition of making the indigenous people marry Incas, but the children from

these marriages were not granted full Incan status). 

They built communities by landscaping the hills with rocks, pathways, aqua ducts, vegetation, and buildings. Really amazing. 

Now the pics! 

After a busy day walking, we declared the rest of the day "kids day". We took the kids to the movie el libro de la vida (the book of life). It was in Spanish and in 3d, but we all really enjoyed it! 

Now the kids require sunglasses for 3d viewing of the tv at our house. Hilarious!

The weather was awesome after the movie, so we sat by the river and ate candied apples from a street vendor. 

Notice the feather? Alex has no

problem eating an apple that he continually brushed the feather in. Good thing we are not germaphobes! He did have a problem later, when he realized his feather was sticky. 

Ah, isn't she sweet? And dirty? And messy? The teachers have started calling her "cuchi" which is a word for pig and a word for someone who is always dirty!