Riobamba, Cuenca (and Ingapirca)

We´ve spent a day in Riobamba where the only real draw is the Saturday market, but what a market!  It was like a whole town.  Whatever you wanted to buy, could be bought here, I reckon, including piles of old shoes.  God knows how you find a pair!  The most interesting (though not in a nice way) items for sale were the live animals.  There were chickens, guinea pigs, rabbits and dogs.  In selecting a chicken, people would hold them upside-down by their feet to compare the weight of one with another.  It´s pretty horrible to see, the poor things thrashing about, often two tied together at the foot.  There were also rabbits, guinea pigs and dogs that look surprisingly healthy.  We honestly couldn´t tell if they were for consumption or pets.  They certainly eat guinea pigs here - you see whole ones roasted, recognisable by their horrible little teeth and claws. Won´t be trying those (intentionally anyway!). 
 
Cuenca was our next stop.  Arriving here on a Sunday was like arriving in a ghost town.  We struggled to even find somewhere for dinner.  It´s full of Spanish colonial architecture and churches and not much else really.  It´s Ecuador´s third largest city.It was cool watching people wash clothes in the river that absolutely gushes along and dry them on the river bank.  ´Panama´ hats are actually made in Ecuador, not Panama, and Cuenca is the centre of the Panama hat trade.  There are many shops here where you can see them being made.
A highlight was visiting a museum which celebrates the indigenous cultures of South American.  They had a collection of shrunken heads (tsantsa) which the Jiraro (jungle tribes of Ecuador and Peru) used to collect as ´trophies´ of battles, like scalps to native American Indians.  About the third the size of a normal head, these were made by peeling the face of the skull, cooking and treating, then stuffing and sewing up the orifices.  The funny thing is that I´d never even heard of a shrunken head until I saw a documentary about them when we were in the US.  Pretty gruesome.
 
We´re leaving Ecuador tomorrow for the neighbouring country Peru.  Both are similar topographically  with three main regions - coastal, a central Andean ´back-bone´ (within which we´ve spent all of our time so far), and Amazonian jungle to the east.  The days are hot in the highlands, and the evenings pretty cold.  One of the side effects of the anti-malaria medication we´re taking (luckily the only one we've been aware of) is hypersensitivity to the sun.  At the same time as having peeling  foreheads and noses, we´ve got colds!  Nothing serious, just sneezing and runny noses (for the parents).
 
We visited the most important Inca site in Ecuador, Ingapirca.  The Incas were (still are, really) the indigenous people that occupied Peru and Ecuador before the Spanish  invaded at the end of the 15th century.  Most of the Ingapirca site was destroyed by the Spaniards in their hunt for gold.  The Incas had actually exchanged all their gold at the coast for seashells, which they considered more valuable, so the destruction was in vain.  The site contains ruins from housing, temples to the Moon and Sun, storage rooms and aqueducts, even ´clocks´ by which the time, day, month, season could be deduced.   To be honest, I´m amazed at how primitive the buildings are.  I realise it was 500 years ago but it´s just that I remember visiting Pompeii in Italy which shows well preserved remains of the city there from when Vesuvius volcano erupted around the time of Christ and there wasn´t much of a difference.  It probably won´t surprise you that some people still live in houses that look like vestiges from these ruins.  We pass them all the time on the road.
 
25% of the people of Ecuador are indigenous (50% in Peru).  They´re so distinctive in the way they dress and look generally.  They tend to have long black hair, dark skin and ruddy cheeks with almost Oriental facial features. Belongings (including children!) are carried in slings made of blankets across their backs. They wear very heavy colourful clothing, never black.  Apparently this is because (at least traditonally) they worshipped nature, including rainbows, and wear the colours in honour of them.  Most of the Indigenous people speak Quechua and live in the highlands (which accounts for the warm clothes).  The best thing is the ´Panama´ hats they all wear.The women´s version has a flower or feather that she wears at the front (if she´s single) or at the side (married).

Early night tonight because tomorrow we face a 7 hour journey by bus to Peru!!