Golden Brown

After a short, and more improtantly, cheap bus ride, I'm in the nearby town of Gualeceo.

It's a quiet little mountain town surrounded by pretty green hills. It's reminiscent of Thal-Bei-Graz, Austria, birth place of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Old women are washing clothes in the river that runs through the centre and the hills in all directions around are peppered with a staccato smattering of colourful houses.

The town doesn't promise any exciting activities, so after an initial wander, I'm in the central food market. As was the case back in Cuenca, hog roasts are popular here. In the market, there's a line of ten of fifteen hog roast stalls. The preperation method for the pig must be very similar to that of the guinea pig in Peru. In this case, I'd guess that the whole animal is bled, gutted, oiled up, and cooked. I don't know what they have that's big enough to roast an entire pig, but there's at least fifteen of them. On each stall, the entire animal is laid on it's belly, with it's rump and hind legs sticking out of the front of the stall. I'm not sure how I'm meant to choose a stall from the line of golden rumps, but I go with the old woman who offers me the free sample. The Ecuadorians have got the hog roast nailed.

Back in Cuenca, the build up to tomorrow's big match between Deportiva Cuenca and Guayaquil's Barcalona (who's emblem is suspiciously similar to Spain's Barcalona) is becoming more and more evident. The streets are littered with Barcalona's yellow shirted travelling fans. I'm reckoning this will be worth staying for.

After an hour of queuing, then an hour-and-a-half of competing with locals to buy from ticket touts, I'm empty handed and painfully hungry. The ticket office ran dry just as I closed in on the front of the queue. The touts want forty-five bucks for tickets that were twelve bucks at the stadium. I'm only hoping the game is on TV.