Dancing the flu away!

Saturday, July 17th
Last night was the first full night of sleep I've had in a while, and let me tell you, I needed it! I still felt sick when I woke up this morning but alas I won't let it keep me down. Padraic and I spent the day together walking around the city. Cuena is a charming city with cobblestoned streets, whitewashed and red-stoned buildings, beautiful plazas, classic and grandeur churches. The city sits alongside the banks of Rio Tomebamba. It's a pleasant blend of classic Spanish colonial architecture with a modern edge. The whole day was kind of amusing because we saw numerous amazing churches and all we wanted to do was to peek inside of them and admire the interior design but sadly for us ALL of them were closed. We did, however, find something that was open for lunch - an amazing restaurant with the best seco de pollo ever! The day was pretty rainy so we called it quits around 5ish. At breakfast, I ran into a girl, Nicoll from California, I met in the Colca de Canyon in Peru about a month ago. We decided that a bunch of us should go out to dinner and dancing together tonight. And so it was...our group grew from 2 people to 9 in an instant (Padraic from Ireland, Nicoll from Cali, Jenna from Cali, Freddy from Chicago, Evan from Brooklyn, Christine from Boston, Till from Germany, Mary from France. We went out to this kitchy worldly restaurant that had a live salsa band. We all had an absolutely fantastic time dancing the night away. I struggled to catch my breath becuase of my chest cold but...hey...I figured maybe I could sweat it out of my system. Tomorrow we'll see if my master plan works.