Well it's been Carnaval here in Cuenca for the past four days but not much of anything happened other than the chances of getting wet greatly increased. Apparently Cuenca is not the place to be for Carnaval as all the Cuencans leave the city and head to the outlying villages or the coast, and everything in Cuenca shuts down for four whole days. It wasn't really that big of a deal for us anyway since both Mike and I have been sick since right before the weekend. We are both feeling a little better tonight but we still don't feel right.
Saturday we didn't do much of anything besides walking to the Supermaxi; and we had to get a taxi home from there as we were too weak to carry the groceries home, awww. The most exciting thing that happened this past weekend was that we saw a pig riding in a truck. I mean it wasn't like he was driving or anything, he was standing in the bed of the truck, but it was a fairly weird sight as we were walking down the road to have a pig staring at us. I'm sure he was on his way to be some folks dinner, he was all brown and crispy. I did cook our first real meal in the apartment when we got home from the supermarket, pasta, yummm.
We did walk into the old town on Monday and wandered around. There were some people around most of whom were throwing water or spraying foam. We got foamed a fair bit, Mike in particular got it right on the face from a passing car - he was not impressed. The kids in particular were very crafty about spraying you, they looked all innocent till you walked past them and then they got you from behind the little buggers. We actually managed to stay fairly for most of the day even though people were lobbing water baloons from their balconies and from the beds of passing trucks, that is until we were walking down Calle Larga to get to home. Some little 'rascal' had a huge bucket of water and was scooping the water out with a pan. He chased us down the street and I got drenched from head to toe; I think he had a little help from his upstairs neighbour who was also pouring water off the balcony. Thankfully it was a nice day with lots of sunshine, although I'm sure the icy water did nothing to help my cold.
Only because we had another Spanish lesson did we head back into town on Tuesday. The lesson went fine, it's actually starting to make some kind of sense. We stayed in town to have lunch at the California Kitchen and then headed home. We were probably about 5 minutes out from the apartment when a truck went past us and threw a water balloon at me, I got drenched again; this time I wasn't happy.
We got home then just in time since as we walked through the door the heavens opened. It was definitely the strongest storm we've had since we've been in Ecuador, it looked like snow when the hailstones hit the rooves as it was hitting with such force. It only hailed/rained for about 20 minnutes but the Tomebamba river outside our window rose by about 3 feet; I hope we don't get a prolonged storm or I'll be able to wash our clothes in the river from our kitchen window.

Mike: The little shits, we should have been better prepared with our own water balloons!