Vacation Part One left off with Samir's departure, and Part Two began with the arrival of slipping into Christmas elf mode. Big grocery trips for imminent feasts, hours spent toiling in my toy workshop making stocking stuffers for roomates. During the holidays, Cuenca is lavishly, if not garrishly decorated. Take, for example, the "tasteful" display of the grotesquely large Mary and Joseph in the park near our apartment...Giant, sparkly robot invaders from the planet Zorblot, more like. However, for my Canadian eyes, Ecuador was missing the most important accessory of all: snow.The current state of our environment may eventually lead to our earth's destruction, but the heartbreak will start when global warming takes away Christmas snow.
Despite this brief lament, my inaugural Christmas abroad was, while foreign from the outside (no snow, no fresh piney-scented Christmas trees, no parents, etc.), it was familiar and perfect on this inside: warm, loving, excited, united, gracious.
I am a lucky person in that I seem to be blessed with finding and keeping wonderful friends wherever I go. Cuenca is no exception, and armed with the wonderful crew I have bonded with here, we faced our foreign Christmas as a family, and had an amazing time doing it.
Christmas morning was amazing, and we all opened stockings filled with thoughtful homemade goodies created by one another. I was doubly endowed as my mum had sent a stuffed stocking via Samir-mail for me to open on Christmas morning. It is worth mentioning that this stocking was obscenely huge and mortifyingly festive, outrageous to the point that I was not permitted to hang it on my top bunk for the days leading up to Christmas, Cor fearing that it would perhaps stretch out a crushed red velvet, bell-tipped, curlicued toe and strangle her in the night...
The celebratory feast that night was hectic in preparation (four households sharing the ONE oven between us, conveniently, in OUR apartment), but sooo worth it and delicious. Stuffed peppers, a gingerbread house, roasted nuts, cider, pumpkin pie, and, la pièce de resistance, a tofurkey! Another meal for the books, and likely, another pound to the scales...
The holiday wound down in standard fashion, with laughter and food hangovers. Within a few days, I was travelling again, this time with Cor, to spend our last week before teaching in an incredible mecca for adventure: Baños.
Baños, roughly seven hours north of Cuenca, is likely the thrill capital of Ecuador. It is THE place to go for any kind of adventure sport, from the mild (glorious hikes) to the wild (scaling waterfalls). During our five days there, Cor and I engaged in a range of these activities, punctuated by a couple of nights out partying with locals and international tourists.
On our first day there, we hiked the few thousand feet to a lookout point to the Volcán Tungurahua. This is one of a few active volcanoes in Ecuador, and it erupts nearly everyday in the form of mild (yet still visible) spewings of smoke and ash. Recent predictions, however, warn that the volcano is gearing up for a more substantial eruption, and since Cor and I's visit, several surrounding villages in the area have been evacuated. Not to worry though, back home in Cuenca, we enjoy a good 400km or so as a buffer between us and the increasingly angry fires of Tungurahua.
Our next big expedition was a giant bike ride along the "Ruta de Las Cascadas" or, the "Route of the Waterfalls". This is one of my favourite things I've done in Ecuador so far. The ride is mostly downhill on fairly decent roads, and you can't help but feel overwhelmingly, deliciously free while whipping across Andean ridges, fresh wind yielding to the speed of the bike. And all along, impossibly beautiful views of towering, lush green mountains. In such settings, I am always overcome by a feeling of being physically very small, but spiritually, immense
Throughout the bike ride there are points to stop at various waterfalls, some of which you take cable cars across giant gorges to view, other require moderate little hikes through jungle-like trails and suspension bridges. As if the biking and the mountains and the waterfalls were not enough, Cor and I decided to turn up the notch a bit and do something that neither of us had anticipated.That is, we jumped off a bridge.
Specifically, we did something akin to bungee jumping, except in Ecuador, they don't use bungee cord, they just use rope. Basically, we jumped off a bridge on a rope. We screamed a lot. The best part (as well as the deciding factor) was that Cor and I were permitted to go at the same time, thus we were harnessed, helmetted, and strapped together, and after a few false starts ("1...2--WAIT!! I'm not ready to do this!! Were you gonna jump just then?? Can't we wait??! I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!!...ok, you can count us down again..."), we did it. Verbal description doesn't do the experience justice, but in a nutshell,
we jumped, screamed embarrassingly loudly, cursing like pirates, swung around like a pendulum in various compromising positions (one of the better ones being Cor curled up like an overgrown baby in my arms, as my legs flailed aimlessly below me), and then we were pulled ungracefully back to our landing spot. We finished the rest of our bike ride on a permanent high. 
At the end of our route, in typically fine Ecuadorian form, we hitched a ride on the back seat of a pick-up truck with our bikes to back track the 40 km we had biked from Baños.New Year's Eve night was also an adventure. South America has a phenomenal tradition on this symbolic night that involves burning effigies made of fibre-stuffed clothing adorned with a lumpy head and a creepy looking mask. These effigies are strapped on to cars and store fronts during the day and are lit on fire, often being piled in a communal pyre in the middle of a city street somewhere around midnight. Cor and I participated by doing our own little effigy ceremony, but we also celebrated North American-style by doing shots of tequila.
The next day was a write-off. Obviously.
The day we left, we had to squeeze in just one last adventure before our night bus back to Cuenca, so we decided to go white water rafting. The rafting was done on level 3-4 rapids (the scale being 1-6), so while there were no hundred-feet drops into rushing torrents of water, there were a few moments when I thought I might pee my wetsuit. Our guide, Xavier, was excellent and impressive with his precise navigation of the rapids, and he only pushed us overboard twice. For our own good, of course.Upon our return, Cuenca appeared like a tranquil metropolitan. Where's the danger? Where's the fun?? I got my answer when I was assigned an over-registered class of early beginner level children. And I thought jumping off a bridge was scary...
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