Cuenca Culture(s)

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Cuenca Culture

Donna and I are currently taking a 4-hour Spanish lesson on M, W, F, and I also have an hour-long charango lesson MWF.  That’s 5 hours of class time, and there’s also practice/review time, or supposed to be.  I am doing better with practicing music than with reviewing Spanish, unless you count watching TV shows with Spanish subtitles.  This makes M, W, F pretty busy.  Tuesdays and Thursdays are more laid back. 

Yesterday we were out and walking around, and in addition to a little time at the big museum here (later) we passed a smallish historical/archeological site, El Museo Manuel Augustín Landivar.  This Museo is dedicated to a small (one city lot) site called the Vestigios de Todos Los Santos.  The site was discovered/dedicated in the early seventies, when relics were found during a construction project.  The site itself contains relics from three different cultures here in Cuenca:  The colonial Spanish period, the Inca period and the Cañari period/culture.  The site itself appears to have been dedicated for much of the time to mill-work, as recently as 1902: 

 

But even during the colonial period, it was a mill: 

And some of this, at least is owing to aqueducts built by the Inca.  Here’s one of their walls, with some neat niches.

But even the Inca were latecomers to the area- the “original” (for now) human inhabitants were the Cañari.  One of their walls remains in this place: 

There are more remains at the big museum, but I need to get the pics organized for that!  Until then, here are some llamas doing there part to keep one of the building ruins free of weeds: 

The evening was dedicated to a concert by the Cuenca Youth Orchestra.  They played at the Old Cathedral, which is now a museum, and a pretty classy place for an orchestra: 

Here’s a closer pic during setup.  Please try to look closely toward the back.  There were several guys there who were older than the youths.  I hear the fellow in the center, in the red robe, plays divinely. 

And here’s the group, ready to play. 

The program for this evening was Mozart Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola (involving 2 “ringer” soloists), and Beethoven’s Symphony no. 7.  Mozart is not my favorite, but I enjoyed the Beethoven, and would have done so more had I not been distracted partway through by the person who had a smallish harp, but left in the middle of the concert….