We went for breakfast at Bananas again this morning and then did a bit more wandering. We visited the Mercado at the west end of the city and I was totally grossed out. It was a huge place with some really nice looking fruits and vegetables of every kind imaginably but alongside the plants were stall after stall of carne and pescado, yuck, yuck, yuck. They have dead things hanging on hooks, and dead things laying on the counters, and more dead things laying on the floors. And then there was the smell and the flies to deal with, it made me want to puke! I guess they use all the parts of the animal down here as there were pigs feet and tripe and other things that I prefer not to think about. We walked past one counter with a little tiny woman and some huge fish. She had them everywhere, including on the floor and she was walking all over them. It might be a meat eaters paradise but to be honest I'm not sure that I'd eat the stuff even if I ate meat.
We headed upstairs to check out the prepared food and guess what, more meat but this time it was cooked and the animals were whole. They have whole roasted pigs laying on the counters and they just hack off chunks for people to eat, again I say yuck!
This afternoon we had arranged to have a Cuencan take us on a tour of the city and the surrounding area. He was Fernando and was supposed to pick us up at 2 p.m. but he didn't arrive until almost 2.30. This is apparently normal for Ecuadorians; we have been told that they never arrive on time for anything and if they invite you someplace you should never arrive at the time they tell you. Anyway, Fernando was very nice and he picked us up in his four wheel truck and first took us to a part of Cuenca called Turi. From the top of the hill we could see the whole of Cuenca, the view was fantastic. Cuenca is nowhere near as extensive as Quito but it still spreads out quite a ways.
We drove around for close to four hours and got a much better perspective of the layout of Cuenca and got a little bit of a history lesson from Fernando. We dorve past a few gas stations on our drive and saw unleaded at $1.25 and diesel at $1.08; everyone in North America and Britain eat your heart out!
We now also have a little more of an idea of where to look for apartments, which we are going to be spending the next few days doing.

Mike: I'm glad I'm a vegetarian!!!!!!!!!!!!!