The Weaving Shop

I love weavings. This was a fun and colorful place to stop on our afternoon tour. We got to see the looms and other equipment, watch them prepare the materials and weave them, and I even actually managed to buy something this time - two gorgeous shawls, which can also be used as table runners, etc, so it seemed like a great investment! What incredible artists these people are! And the colors! - from dyes made from natural materials.

Ecuador!

We're back from a 3 week to Ecuador. I will try to post some of the photos and stories soon. But for now just let me say that it is a beautiful country with friendly people, gorgeous flowers, amazing crafts and not very exciting food.
In answer to the question that all my friends have been asking: yes, I could live there, but didn't really find any good reason to do so.  Guyaquil is not a bad place at all, is on the river (you know I love being on the water), is hot and rather humid, has a lot of statues and monuments everywhere, a few museums and some good seafood, but not a lot more to recommend it.
Cuenca is a beautiful small city and it's not hard to see why a lot of expats are settling there. Walkable flat city with charming, cobblestone streets, vivid flowers everywhere, lovely old architecture, and surrounded by villages filled with creative people designing and producing amazing textiles, leather goods, guitars, silver and gold jewelry for starters gives a hint of what we found. Add into that mix a lot of truly friendly and helpful people pretty much rounds out the picture. Much as we enjoyed the city, however, the altitude is quite a bit too high for my breathing problems, so you won't see us joining all those expats in the latest expat hot zone.

Museum Day

One of the goals I set for myself a while ago was to visit every museum in Lima! I don't know if that's even possible considering how many there are. I'm always accidentally discovering one that I'd never heard of before, so it may be an open-ended project, but that's just fine. How amazing to live in a city with so much history and so many museums that you can never see them all! My project got a huge boost recently when one of the BMW's (more on them later), the amazing archaeologist Dorothee Rivka Rago, took my friends and me on a private tour of the Amano Museum here in Miraflores. The museum is home to an amazing collection of ceramics, textiles and various objects from all pre-columbian cultures, with an emphasis on the Chancay culture. The visit was so fascinating, and I ended up with so many amazing photographs, that I came home and put together a photo collection for the friends who had been with me on the visit. You can see my collection of photos over at Morning at Amano with Dorothee.