Blake, watch your guinea pig! They are tasty.

Last night, while I made the blog post, Phillip came running in, saying ¨Give me your camera!¨ I finished the post then went outside to see what he was watching. It was a parade of kids dressed in costumes.

I asked the Internet fellow, and he said it was an early Carnaval parade. The Ecuadorians celebrate Carnaval officially for the four days before Ash Wednesday. The country is 95% Roman Catholic and they take their religious holidays seriously. Some more of the kiddos:

Most of the groups danced when the parade stopped every few minutes. The moms were running thru with cups of water for any of them who raised their hand. My favorite was the following, which looked like mummies to me, and was sponsored by a hospital:

This morning, we decided to leave Riobamba and come early to Baños to spend and extra day here. It was a great decision, as we already love Baños. It rivals Puerto Lopez for a friendly, walkable town, but it is a little bigger and cleaner. Here is the outside of our room, I´ll get an inside picture later, as we are spending 4 nights here. That´s our patio table outside our door, right next to the flower garden.

Now, to the title of this blog.... this is the heart of cuy country. We told you we were going to eat roasted guinea pig, and we did. This is the little fellers on the roaster. These aren´t done yet, like the ones later.

The restaurant lady got a kick out of our interest, and offered to take a picture for us.

Notice the toasty brown skin. It was crispy like unbattered fried chicken. The meat was not gamey-tasty at all. One guinea pig fed both Phillip and me. That´s the sides, rice and potatoes, next to the guinea pig. I guess I have to tell you it tasted like chicken. It didn´t taste like beef or pork, but was quite tasty. I did let Phillip pick the meat off the head... notice the rodent´s little teeth next to Phillip´s finger.

This afternoon, we went on a chiva ride to see waterfalls. A chiva is an open-sided bus, usually used for tours or tramsporting mountain folks. This one was for the tours, so nothing obstructed our view. We - yes I said we - rode a cable car over one waterfall:

We saw several waterfalls and gorgeous mountain scenery. At the final waterfall of the tour, we had the opportunity to hike down to the base and swim if we wanted. We hikes down, but didn´t swim. Actually, we needed the swim AFTER we hiked back up the mountain to the chiva bus!

The waterfall put off a mist, so all our pictures have waterspots. I could have gotten closer, but I would have gotten wetter! We are so glad we decided on an extra night in Baños. We have even more things planned for tomorrow already!