Cuenca...we arrived here by bus shortly before Christmas and intended to stay only a few days and decide what to do in the long-term as cycling no longer seemed to be an option due to Chris’s leg injury. Over a month later and we’re still here! We have decided to stop cycling, at least for now, to give Chris’s leg a chance to heal properly. Six months of hard cycling and determination/stubborn desire to keep going has finally taken its toll. So Cuenca is home for now! The fact that we have stayed so long says a lot for the town. It’s a beautiful place situated in the Andes at a height of 2530m. The city is filled with churches, plazas, colonial buildings, cobbled streets and friendly people. It also has a great climate!
The bus journey from Baňos (about 8 hours in total) was fairly uneventful, we managed to get the bikes on ok, and were far more wary with our bags as a result of the camera theft on the way to Baňos. This is pretty difficult when we have panniers and backpacks – 8 small bags between us to keep track of – and makes for a fairly unrelaxing journey. After about 6 hours I noticed that the man sitting in the aisle next to us was eating something that looked very like a big lump of chocolate. I was jealous, and pointed out the treat to Chris. As we looked closer we realised that the ‘chocolate’ was in fact part of an animal’s face, and that the man was pulling teeth out from the jawbone before tearing off chunks of meat! Not so appetising after all.
When we arrived we were lucky enough to find someone to couchsurf with over Christmas – Allen, a photographer from San Francisco who has bravely decided to leave his old life behind him and start again in South America. We ended up spending about a week with Allen. On Christmas Eve they have a big parade in Cuenca – the Pase del Nino – it starts at around 8am and seemed to go on until about 2pm! Everyone seems to get involved, dressing up as anything from an angel to a clown to a Maypole dancer and parading through the streets of Cuenca
(see pictures here). Hundreds of people were lining the streets to watch and it was a really great occasion. We have learnt that they love parades here; in fact they seem to happen so frequently that now when we hear the banging of drums and the sounds of brass instruments playing sometimes we don’t even investigate what is going on.
They also seem to celebrate occasions in the most incongruous places here. In the lead up to Christmas we were in a meat market when we realised that a small Christmas service was about to start! Amongst the stalls selling raw meat, cows hooves, tongues and hanging sausages there was a small group of children dressed up in traditional and festive clothes representing a nativity scene
(see pictures here). There was also a vicar who was chanting into a microphone. Most of the market activity stopped while everyone watched the display and joined in with hymns and prayers.
We spent Christmas with Allen in Cajas National Park, which is about 40 minutes outside of Cuenca. At first I was very dubious about this idea – what is a Christmas day without hours of inactivity inside and copious amounts of good food? Well apparently it can be pretty good without these key ingredients. We spent the whole day walking in mountains with wild llamas around us, strange new plants to look at and breathtaking panoramic views everywhere we looked. We even managed to have some pretty good food in the evening. Of course we did have to pay the tourist entrance fee for the park of $10 (versus about $1 for Ecuadorians!) but it was well worth it.
Allen left the next day after a cold night in the refuge building (he had no sleeping bag). Chris and I stayed for two more nights, and really fell in love with the area. We explored the national park fairly well, and managed to see some brilliant wildlife, lakes and waterfalls. We even went swimming, ignoring the advice of the brochure that we received when we entered the park: ‘The water in the lakes of Cajas National Park is very cold. Avoid contact at all times.’ It was pretty cold, too.
Cycling was far from our minds when we returned to Cuenca and got ready for New Year with the rest of the city. Everyone here makes Guy Fawkes-esque mannequin people who represent all the bad aspects of the year that they are leaving behind as they enter the next year. They put papier-mache masks on these ‘people’. The masks are pretty spectacular and were sold in almost all shops in the lead up to New Years Eve. As we approached the big day, more and more mannequins were visible in front of shops and houses. Lots had signs attached asking for donations, and in the afternoon of New Years Eve there were mini roadblocks all over the city as men and boys dressed up as women and danced in front of the oncoming traffic until they were given money. As well as making mannequins, people in Cuenca make huge cardboard scenes in the streets consisting of cardboard people, cars, tables etc. The best way to explain is through photos...check them out here. It was very impressive! At the turn of the New Year, we were at a big cardboard scene...after the hours that everyone must have spent making all everything, it was thrown onto a huge bonfire, doused it with petrol and set it alight exactly at midnight. It was quite spectacular! For luck, some crazy people even started jumping over/through the big fire! Then they started firing crazy homemade fireworks everywhere. I felt like I was in one of the videos that are shown at every school in the lead up to Guy Fawkes night – what not to do with fireworks: keep them in your pocket, use them in a street or public place, let small children hold them while lit, light them and throw them into a crowd etc etc. The lack of safety was sort of liberating though, and no one seemed to get hurt. We spent the night dancing in the street having flour thrown over us, and ended the night in true English style in a kebab place. The great thing about the Cuencan New Year (apart from the fires and fireworks) was the mixture of people dancing in the streets. Unlike anything you’d be likely to see in England, there was a huge group of strangers - old people, young people, children, tourists and foreigners all enjoying themselves together. It was a great atmosphere.
Cycling was far from our minds when we returned to Cuenca and got ready for New Year with the rest of the city. Below is a 10-step plan to enjoying a Cuencan New Year:
1. Make a papier mache person to represent all the bad aspects of the year that you are leaving behind as you enter the new year. Leave the mannequin outside your house with a sign attached asking for money.
2. Put a mask on the mannequin
(see pictures here).
3. Spend all of New Year’s Eve making huge cardboard scenes in the street. If necessary block off a few roads.
4. If you are a man, dress up as a woman and make more roadblocks with string. Dance in front of the oncoming traffic until they give you money.
5. Converge on the street for midnight (preferably close to a big cardboard scene).
6. Throw everything you have spent time making (mannequins, masks, cardboard scenes etc) onto a big bonfire.
7. Douse bonfire with fuel and light at midnight.
8. Jump over big bonfire to bring you luck for the next year.
9. Set homemade fireworks off. Give lit fireworks to small children, throw into large crowds of people or just keep the fireworks in your pocket for later use.
10. Dance around big bonfire with fireworks all night. Throw flour over gringos and anyone else who gets in your way.
We spent the night dancing in the street having flour thrown over us, and ended the night in true English style in a kebab place. The great thing about the Cuencan New Year (apart from the fires and fireworks) was the mixture of people dancing in the streets. Unlike anything you’d be likely to see in England, there was a huge group of strangers - old people, young people, children, tourists and foreigners all enjoying themselves together. It was a great atmosphere.
The next parade was just a few days later, and was called the Parade of the Innocents. This parade commemorates the children (or Innocents) killed when King Herod ordered the killing of all male children in Bethlehem. It was probably my favourite parade so far, the costumes were fantastic and the whole atmosphere was electric. Again, photos are the best way to get this point across...see them here. My favourite group of people was the Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ group. They were all dressed as zombies and lying on the floor with wooden gravestones in front of them. We were lucky enough to walk past just as the Thriller music came on, and they all dragged themselves up from their ‘graves’ and started doing the thriller dance. Brilliant!
Link to videos from parade
So...a month later and we are still here. And what have we been doing? The main activity has been learning Spanish! We have enrolled at a language school here called the Amauta Fundacion
(www.amauta.edu.ec), where lessons cost between $6-8 an hour. The school is situated in the heart of the city in a lovely old building with a covered courtyard area inside. We have been having lessons for about a month now, and the teaching has been brilliant (surprisingly a lot of fun!). We have met a lot of great people at the school, and our Spanish is gradually improving. Aside from Spanish, we have been taking salsa lessons, Ecuadorian cooking lessons, cycling (not Chris), playing Frisbee with the local Gringo crew, going to markets, and (importantly) catching up with the latest series of Spooks. We are planning on staying here for at least another 3 weeks, and after that we will see what happens. It would be great to get really good at Spanish before we leave. Our visas run out at the end of the month, and we have just found out that it’s no longer possible to do visa runs in Ecuador. Hopefully we won’t get kicked out of the country...we are looking into getting a visa extension somehow, or getting student visas. The next cause for celebration in Cuenca is Carnival. This festival is to compensate for the abstinence of meat which will follow during lent. It starts this week, but already people are getting ready. Shops are stocking up with water pistols of every kind, and we have been the unfortunate victims of TWO drive-by water bomb attacks! So, watch this space for updates on carnaval and visas.
