Two first weeks in cuenca are over. It has been two very interesting weeks! Our spanish is doing pretty good, we are learning a lot every day from our professor, Martha. It´s just us two and her, so from 8 in the morning to 12 it´s very intense learning. We are just now learning about past tence, and tomorrow we will start on irregular verbs in preteritum. It´s not easy. Anyways we are having fun at school every day, sometimes a little tired though.

After school we usually walk about in the town for a little while before we separate and go for lunch at our hostfamilies at about 1.30pm. After lunch we meet again and either study spanish, training, go to salsa lessons or play fotball at some park. The city is not very big, beautiful and quiet. And hot. The weather since we got here have been unusually sunny for this time of the year. And the sun is not like the sun in europe, we are living pretty close to the equator at an altitude of 2500m, so we have to be careful. Can´t do any taning here, the sun is simply to strong. In two weeks though, when we travel to the coast, we will get some quality time on the beach.

So what have we done so far, except from learning spanish and walking around in Cuenca? Welhl, last weekend we visited Baños, a small volcano right next to the city. Although it is hard to tell that it actually is a volcano, we bathed in hot water coming directly from the volcano. Lot´s of other stuff to do at the spa´s in Baños, among others wierd vapor treatment, massages and mudintheface. And the price for this luxury; two different spas, massages, big lunch, bustickets and different treatments was $20 each(120kr). Take a look at the pictures. On sunday we walked to a hill next to the city called Turi. Here we had an awesome view of the city. We also met our good friend Magnus. We also finally got our 15 minutes of fame when about 15 local women wanted their picture with us. We think that our awesome white skin was appealing to them.

In Cuenca its actually usual to eat what they call "cuy", and we call guniea pigs. Off course, this strange habit had to be tested and we joined a group from the school for a small fiest. As it turns out, they dont only eat the meat, the heart, intestants, nails, theet and brains are also considered quite the delicacy. Check out the pictures!

This weekend we went to the national park of Cajas. It's basically 40 000 hectars of beatiful nature and wild animals. With us we brought two of the girls from our school and just payed Ludvigs neighboor to drive us up in the mountains. The weather was completely awesome and our hike up to te lake we wanted to camp by was nothing less. After walking through jungle, marshes and steep hills up to about 3700moh we found our camping-spot on a tiny beach by the like. Unfortunately, two wild dogs had found a dead deer floating in the water and we got some competition for the spot. Luckily the dogs was way smaler than us, so we managed to keep them on a distance. Througout the night we stayed up listening to the wild life around us, looking at the fireflies, admiring the clear night sky and, off course, struggling to keep the fire going. After fighting the cold in what proved to be to few sleeping bags and blankets we started the hike up to above 4100moh sunday morning. Again, the weather was amazing and the walk, even though exhausting, was a marvelous experience. We finished the weekend with hiking down from the mountains on the truck of a car. Also good fun!

Next weekend we are trekking up to some ancient inca-ruins a couple of hours away. We've heard its like a mini - macchu picchu. Hopefully we'll be able to find a cheap guide to take us up throug the inca-trail. Looking forward to it!