Yesterday was Memorial Day. I hope you all had fun. As for me, I was already on vacation so I almost forgot. As for the day's activities we visited Incan ruins at about 10,000 feet elevation. I felt a little bit better than some of my fellow cadets as we hiked around because my roommate and I had gone for a run that morning in Cuenca, partially acclamating us to the thinner air. Still it wasn't easy and as I finished my struggle to the top of a hill any pride that I had in my physical abilities was dashed to pieces by a fourish foot Ecuadorian farmer carrying what looked to be about 150 lbs of llama feed on his back.
We got back to Cuenca, grabbed our swimsuits and headed over to another hotel whose pool was formed from a natural hot spring. That and the Turkish bath cleared out my sinuses pretty well, though perhaps too well because they dried out overnight and I've got a bit of a sore throat this morning. We got back from the hot springs, ate dinner and my roommate and I went out to see more of the old city.
I almost forgot! The absolutely greatest Catholic cathedral I have ever seen was just a few minutes off the path back from the ruins. Built on a steep hillside (what might be called a mountain in the eastern United States) the entire back wall of the chapel was the raw stone of the hill itself. From the outside it looked like a castle with several different steep winding staircases leading up to the chapel. One of the things that had been brought up at the Incan ruins was that the Spanish often destroyed Incan temples or appropriated stone for other building projects as part of their iconoclastic colonization techniques. I could see how this cathedral could have had an impressive psychological effect on any indigenous person trying to decide which god to place their bet on. All in all, a pretty good day.
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