Pretty women and a new friend

We walked quite a bit around Cuenca today while our laundry was being done ($5 for a huge bag, 10 days worth of clothes). Every third block it seemed we came across a park like the one in the picture. And notice the people in the park. Each one of them had people sitting on the benches or walking around enjoying the day. We came to one park that was decorated by the following:

How Phillip got them to pose, I do not know..... Actually, we walked up on some type of photo shoot involving very pretty young women. The one in the white dress was absolutely georgeous. I laughed when a bunch of construction workers from nearby noticed this and decided to take a break in this park. They were polite and just watched, as did everyone in the park. Especially Phillip.

And of course, lunch! We went to the market. On the upstairs level, food stalls tempted us, but one lady saw us and gave us a sample of her pork. Excellent sales tactic as we ate there. This plate has mote (a version of hominy but better and bigger) on the bottom, two potato patties (the yellowish things), chunks of tender, juicy pork, topped with a vegetable slaw-salsa type mixture. Plenty to eat... $2. Wnd while we were eating, a family came up and sat at our table. Hernan and Rosa are the older couple on the ends in the picture.

She is an English translator and he is hilarious. He spoke a heavily accented English, and very slow Spanish for us. He made jokes and he and Phillip just died laughing as I talked with Rosa. We exchanged emails and they invited us to stay with them if we get back to Guayacil. The pork lady was giving us dirty looks for staying at her table for so long!

One final scenery picture for today... This is the view from our balcony. At night, the blue domes and the smaller square white ones are lit up. Unfortunately for the camera, there is a streetlight just to the right of this scene, so the day pictures are better than the night pictures.