goodbye cuenca

Hello again. its been a while. glad to see you are all still here and attentive.
we have moved south since the last post and are now in a small town called Villcabamba a few hours north of the Peruvian border.
On our way south we passed through Latacunga and the Quilotoa loop (which Erica will elaborate on in the few days), made an enjoyable stop in Baños (soon to be written by Amy) and then on to Cuenca. I am going to write about the unmitigated disaster that is Cuenca (to the best of my memory). Here we go.
We arrived in Cuenca, a relativly nice colonial city, (Lots of churches. Cobblestone roads. Markets.) at about dusk on sunday. and, as luck would have it, everything was closed. But, we were hungry, so on the advice of the Hostal we set off to find a restaurant around the corner. It was a small Colombian chicken restaurant that didnt seem much different from the hundreds of other pollerias we had seen. The choices on the menu were rice and some meat, rice and stuff, rice and some other stuff, or some stuff kind of mixed with other stuff. That, or you could choose 1/8 of a chicken (listed on the menu) and see what comes with it. we all opted for that. after 25minutes of waiting we were served a...lets call it... soup with what we hope were chicken feet and other parts. That was followed by a leg or breast of roasted chicken with rice and salad and fries. (not bad.) That was followed, at about 2am, by violent vomiting. first by Amy, and then Erica. All together, 9x. good job girls! i ate the most out of all of us and miraculously escaped unscathed. for the time.
so, the next day the girls were in bed all day, save for a brief 10min stretch where we crossed the street to chanbge hostals. they looked miserable and i did my best to comfort them as best as possible. while they slept, i managed to explore the city a bit and get some air. nothing of major interest. The next day, i figured they were feeling better enough that i could explore a bit more so i set off to the ancient Inca fortress of Ingapirca which i found out. upon arrival, was closed. the local indiginous villages want a portion of the money earned on entrance fees by the govt. fair play. so, without telling us it was closed, the bus dropped us off (me and a dutch couple and an 24yr old english girl) and told us it was a 15min walk to the site. wrong. about an hour. and then when we got there, we were informed, if we crossed the piket line, there could be shooting. we stayed well away. (the locals were actually very polite and explained everything clearly, but they were firm that we could not enter.) the bus that was supposed to come pick us up didnt, so we had to take another bus into Cañar to get the bus back to Cuenca. getting off this bus, i proved that my head was not as strong as my stomach. i stood up, hit my head on a corner of the ceiling and gave myself a concusion. in short, felt VERY shaky, fainted in the kitchen of small chicken restaurant, and brought the cumulative group vomit total to 10. well done group!
i went to the dr. and he took care of me and said to take it very slow. i went back to cuenca, spent the rest of the day in bed, the next day mostly in bed, and then we decided to get the hell out of cuenca.

ps. we are all well on the way to recovery.