Living up to its name as the country's prettiest city, Cuenca is like Cusco but without the hordes of snap happy tourists (ourselves included!). Cue lots of sunny plazas, ornate churches and architecture splendour.

Checked into our lovely hostel with a fab courtyard garden and homecooked bread for breakfast and headed out to explore the sights.

Spent an age visiting a panana hat factory watching how they are made and shaped - it takes a day for a normal hat to be woven but up to 3 weeks for a super fino one - before trying on several dozen and picking out some particularly stylish ones for our lucky folks back home! After all this is the actual country that invented the mistakenly called Panama hat, which is actually called a Montecristo. So now you know.

Tired after all our hat-trying we revived ourselves with a coffee and watched the humming birds eating from the feeder....now, we're not twitchers but they really are pretty cool birds, really fast and they do actually fly backwards!!

Bad tourists that we are, we had dinner in the only gringo bar in town including some fab cocktails although we did try and hunt down a local bar only for Tim to almost break his ankle in a rather foolish game of jump-from-stoneball-to-stoneball after one too many of the afore mentioned cocktail!

Hopped, well limped, onto a local bus for visit the local town of Gualaceo about 25 km away to hunt down the local delicacy of 'hornado'. This is basically a whole roasted pig on a spit which has been slow cooking for 10 hours served with roastie potatoes....hmmmm...so tasty that it really doesnt matter that the meat is simply ripped from the carcass by the woman's bare hands. Health and safety, schmafety.

Tried to walk off our meat feast by trotting to the next town along Chordeleg, famous for gold and silver, but only got halfway when the 'pleasant stroll' turned into a sweaty tromp up a mountain alongside a dual carriageway. Thanks Lonely Planet. Managed to cram onto a local bus for the last bit with Tim hanging out the door hanging on for dear life!

Later that evening we met up for many many more mojitos with a friendly Oz couple from the hostel and some surprisingly good sushi before crashing out.

Sadly the next morning we were the victims of a heinous theft....when a cheeky old women nicked our wonderful panama hats from an internet cafe. The embarrased owner called the number she had just called and spoke to her bemused husband who obviously knew nothing of his wife's sombrero thievery but unsurprisingly refused to give out his address. But the plot thickens.....the hostel guy called again about an hour later only to be told that the man did not infact even know this woman and that she most certainly was no longer his wife. Oh reeeeeeeally....we can only imagine he was saying this as he adjusted a new panama hat in his bathroom mirror!

Oh well, no harm done, and despite the hostal guys somewhat scary determination to track down their address through a mate who worked in the mobile phone company, we hot footed it back to the hat shop, told of our sad tale and scored a tasty little discount to replace the missing hats. So hats hat, end of story. Meanwhile there is a old woman trotting round Cuenca looking very pleased with herself and her hats....!