There is one ad board that fascinates me. It is a box with cooked cuy ( a kind of rabbit which is eaten here in special days) about to be sent to Queens in NY. Surprisingly it is cheaper to call to the US than an Ecuadorian mobile. The strong US improntus is noticeable everywhere. The city is clean, the most European-like we have seen so far in Ecuador.I am really intersting in the arquitecture colonial legacy. Contrary to the North highlands where the colonial houses are exactly the ones one could find in Extremadura, here in Cuenca, the colonial buildings reminds me of the arquitecture in the North of Spain.
The indigenous landscape becomes more and more complex as time goes by, what allures me more and more. Although in Europe we tend to think about the Inca history of Ecuador, in fact the Incas stayed for less than a century in this area. Thanks to the hairdoes and the clothes it is still possible nowadays to notice the pre-inca groups legacy. The group par excellance in Azuay (the province Cuenca is capital of) is called Cañaris. They speak kitchwa (different from the quechua spoken in Peru) and wear bombin-shaped hats. Cañari women wear colourful skirts and ponchos. And it is not a touristic thing. They do wear those same beautiful clothes wherever they are, even working at their small land plots.
