Jungle Time Part 1

Greetings from Vilcabamba,
There is so much to say since yesterday. After my post from Loja around 11, I toured the entire city center. That picture is me in the main plaza (sorry about the angles but I never trust anyone else to take my camera). I went to the city fruit market and bought a disappointing orange from a guy who charged me double (only 0.10 and I knew the going rate but he looked desparate). I then bought some boxed wine, bread and cheese and climbed to the highest point in the city for the view. It just so happened that that point was also the cemetary. I felt a little bad eating my food and drinking my wine in the graveyard but it was really beautiful and I had to climb through some barbed wire to get there. This is the picture form the top.

After that, I walked back to the hostel for a short nap, and then proceeded to Loja´s biggest highlight: Parque de Jipiro. All of teh guidebooks talked about it but I don´t think it can be described in words so I will attempt with words and pictures.




The park theme is to cover the whole world. The buildings and structures throughout the park represent regions. Here´s the problem. They are sort of offensive and really amusing. For example, the Zulu house representing Africa was the toilets. The island with a miniture Big Ben, some statue represnting Italy, an Eiffel Tower, and some small Western European symbols was also Monkey Island covered with angry spider monkeys.


The Russian building was a playground. China and India were oddly merged together to form a stage, and a strange global building was the administration. As if all of that wasn´t enough, they had random animals in all of the wrong places. There were ostriches in Russia and Panda paintings in India. They also had an Incan temple that was made of plastic even though there are real Inca temples only a few km away! To top it all off, as I left I saw a law school. On the side was a mural with a judge doing magic, Lady Justice getting attacked by a nude lawyer with a spear and some animals, just for fun. I´m thinking about applying?


After that. I went back to my hostel and met a Kiwi and an Aussie. They were both older but really friendy and fun. I have to mention that up until this point, I hadn´t seen any other gringos. The kiwi told me a great story that I have to relay:
She was in Cuenca with a couple of Americans. The one American girl was quite fat. They went to a food market and the woman was trying to ask how much something costs. The appropriate term is Cuenta costas? but she kept saying como muchos. Not the worst translation except that como means both how and I eat, and muchos means much and a lot. So here is this fat American telling all of the vendors that she eats a lot!

Moving on, I went a a neat local bar that reminded me of a favorite place of mine when I was in Barcelona. The Aussie came along for a couple pints. We swapped travel stories although his put mine to shame. He´s been everywhere, quite literally including Afghanistan, Sudan, Congo, etc.

This morning I hopped on a bus heading South to Vilcabamba, a sleepy jungly town a few hours North fo teh Peruvian border. The bus ride created another wonderful anecdote. It was packed, not even standing room left. I was stuck in the far back with my bag on my lap. The radio was playing "What is Love" from Night at the Roxbury. Everyone started singing. Wait, it doesn´t end there. Some drunken teens in the back had brought a stereo of their own and started to sing along to what sounded like a Latino Cher. The front and the back tried to outsing one another! I just sat taking it all in, although anyone who knows me will know how hard it was not to sing along with the front of the bus.

My hotel in Vilcabamba is quite literally in the jungle. Look below at the pictures of my walk just to get to the reception (from the bus stop to the "main" building). It´s stunning how beautiful it is here. I will probably stick around the area at least for a few days.




Keep writing and I will do my best to keep posting.

Love
Kent

PS - Sorry about spelling. Spellcheck doesn´t work on Ecuadorian computers and I don´t have the internet time to proofread.