Chanting in the Valley

We are still in Vilcabamba and taking spanish lessons from Luz. We have observed that the eating of an afternoon ice cream bar is a common custom in town and we have readily adopted it as our own.

Every afternoon, there is a rainbow in the east over the mountains and every sunset so far has been beautiful and its own - pink and blue one day, yellow, gray, and green the next. We are figuring out where to go after this. Maybe up to Cuenca then west to the coast. Where would you go? At the end of July, we will meet up with Kim´s friends and zip over to the Galapagos.

We took a bus into Loja a few days ago and Michael Jackson videos were playing in the stores and his songs were coming out of car windows. Besides the detection of of such a major siesmic shift as the passing of a King, we are pretty much buffered from the hub-bub.

There is a black and brown puppy who visits us every morning and a few cats that roam around and nap out front. The next door neighbor doesn´t seem to like us. We are, afterall, the foreigners who moved in next door. There are a lot of donkeys around and, boy, do they hee-haw. The roosters crow at the faintest hint of dawn and dogs bark and howl through the night. Last night I woke to a chorus of men singing a strange chant in a minor key. A chorus of women then responded with a verse of their own. This went on for a good half hour, back and forth.