The domes of the New Cathedral can be seen from most high ground in Cuenca.
The New Cathedral was built in the last hundred years but still qualifies to be called new. The Old Cathedral, on the other side of Parque Calderone, is smaller, less ambitious, and is used now for events, occasional ceremonies, and as a museum.
The New Cathedral is simple on the outside but grandiose inside.
Standing inside, on marble floors, with enormous space above and around me, I am humbled. Modern man is not accustomed to being humble until events spiral out of control and they are looking at their homes destroyed in a flood, earthquake,hurricane, or fire.
In older days, there weren’t as many screens shielding us from reality or ideologues trying to shape the way we see the world around us.
People died young, the fact that some are rich and most are poor was accepted as normal, and armies marched across borders with fire and brimstone. These days no one on television tells you problems are insurmountable and the only thing you can do is pray.
This morning, people kneel in prayer, some light candles, some quietly sit in the pews, touch their beads or read catechisms on I phones. There is no official ceremony today and Christ is eclipsed by gold trim. Flat screen televisions ,mounted on stanchions ,help those in the back of the church see services when church is in session.. There is one confession box open and a sole lady waits to go inside and confess her small sins that aren’t likely to sink our boat.
Outside,city life continues without repose, or reflection.
Vendors are selling candles, rosaries, beads as you reach the Cathedral’s front steps. On another side of the church are stalls selling Christmas stockings, cards, and tree ornaments. A man selling lottery tickets does a brisk business and cops ensure that thieves know there are earthly punishments to add to spiritual ones.
Knowing what I know about the Spanish conquest of South America, and the part the church played, I find it hard to stay here and be respectful.
You can buy flowers all over Cuenca, but one of the best places to buy is at a small flower market in front of the Sanctuario Mariano, across from the New Cathedral, down the street from Parque Calderone. Daily, under white canvas tents, ladies and men do flower arrangements, sell flowers, meet the public.
Cut flowers are one of Ecuador’s big exports, number 3.
Roses are the most popular for export to the U.S. and the industry employs 103,000 people and generates 800 to 900 million dollars annually to the Ecuador economy. Despite stiff foreign competition and changing likes of customers, the industry has improved its working conditions. Ecuador roses are world class quality and benefit from a longer growing season with no winter and lots of natural light. Cool Andean nights give the roses time to add coloration.
Facts are facts, but roses are a way to a woman’s heart.
Men, with a briefcase in one hand and a bouquet of roses in the other, leave the market today with quiet hopeful smiles.
This band is from Otavalo, Ecuador and is playing on a corner by the Cuenca New Cathedral.
Dressed in costume, the musicians play, sing, dance,and pose with a European tourist who wants his wife to take a photo of him playing an Andean pipe. Managers and friends sell band CDs and crafts on the sidewalk in front of the performers as they entertain.
While the group is performing, a policeman asks for the band’s permit papers, stamped and signed.
The bands leader produces their authorization,and, moments later, the cop returns papers to him and walks away, satisfied.
Winay, is energetic, surprisingly contemporary, and draws a crowd.
We all like to be entertained and when these musicians dance they look like feathered dervishes drawing circles on the sidewalk with their toes and bare feet.
The spirit that makes them dance captures us too.
The police man, like all government officials, satisfied with seeing proper paperwork in order, has moved on.
I see him, emotionless, slipping a traffic ticket under the windshield wipers of a nearby delivery van, illegally parked by the flower market.
Laws, after all, are laws.
If we don’t have our laws, aren’t we the same as savages dancing to multiple Gods, under sparkling stars ,on dark windblown mysterious nights?
There are surprises on walks, many of them small, many that will be missed if you are not in the right mind to see them.
My first surprise this morning is horses in Calderone Park that kids can ride, pushed by a man. These equines roll easily on park paths. They look well fed, have saddles and reins, and come in all sizes. They appear real till you see their marble eyes and tongues that look like the end of Santa’s sock.
Another surprise is on a bridge crossing the Rio Tomebamba.There are three sets of locks, knotted together on a bridge railing. This might have begun as a protest, but, more than likely, a prankster kicked it off with one lock and chain with others jumping on board later. There is a similar, much larger, collection of locks knotted together like this in a Montevideo business district so I know even the zaniest things happen all over the world and I, or you, will not likely come up with something new under the sun.
A third surprise today is street art on walls leading down stairs to the river. Colorful, eccentric, imaginative, even obscene, the shapes, colors, and graffiti are difficult to ignore.
Even though I go looking for odd , I don’t want too much of it.
Without a lot of sameness, odd is not very interesting.
I speculate that Heaven is the only perfect place only a few are ever going to see. and, even in Heaven there will be a few loose strings and butt cans to be emptied.
Even angels have a hard time quitting cigarettes.
Looking where you walk in unfamiliar places is a very good idea.
On morning walks down Luis Cordero, through Parque Calderone, I ramble down stair steps, take a quick scamper over a bridge across the Rio Tomebamba, and park my creaking bones at the Gringoland McDonalds where Wi-Fi is still free and the coffee cup is almost bottomless. Customers come and go throughout the day and sometimes are entertaining.
Sidewalks and streets in Cuenca’s historical areas all have bumps and grinds that would make a stripper happy and there are multiple opportunities to take a tumble if I didn’t pick my feet up.
When walking here you keep eyes open because if you fall in Ecuador it is never the sidewalk’s fault. In a foreign port you can sue if you have a mind too but you will be assigned a lawyer that speaks a language you don’t understand,the jury will never be of your peers, and the courtroom will be full of strange rules. In a foreign country, the best thing to do is watch where you step, all the time.
Sidewalks,it seems, aren’t worth a look until you spend a morning taking pictures of them.
Looking at the world, from shoe level, gives you a different perspective.
Even in 2015, we still spend a lot of time on our feet.
Our dad liked fishing. His dad liked fishing. So, sons and grandsons like fishing too.
The Rio Tomebamba bubbles up memories of trout streams in New Mexico, the Pecos and Jemez in particular. It also reminds me of the Conejos River in southern Colorado, or the Gila River near Silver City, New Mexico.
We have caught trout out of smaller streams than this. There are rocks behind which the trout can rest and deeper pools where they congregate. Running water keeps nutrients flowing on the surface for them to strike as they pick and choose when and what to eat.
This river remains an anchor in a big city, a place to relax and stroll, a jazz song out of nature’s music book. One of the better things about the city of Cuenca is that it hasn’t crowded out the nature that is inside it.
If I were to move here, I would look for a small apartment by this river so I could walk along its side every morning just like this.
Rivers are bright murmuring bow’s to life’s presents.
This evening we are treated by an American jazz musician who has a home in Cuenca. She slips into the Jazz Society club with her instrument in its case, takes a seat and listens to the band, puts her horn together, finds a reed, and joins the boys for the concluding song of the first set.
Musicians don’t have to speak English or Spanish or French or Swahili. Jazz has its own language, history, theory, super stars. If the girls in the audience a few tables away from me would have quit gossiping in the corner while she soloed, I could have heard the music even better.
When music is on fire, you shouldn’t be doing things that put it out.
Quality is quality is quality.
Sue swung the whole room to her way of playing, and, being a gracious lady, was endearing.
Lots of jazz musicians find better living and playing conditions outside the United States where jazz was created.
Jazz has always been an equal opportunity music, but all audiences for it are not created equal.
The Museo Pumapungo’s second floor features exhibits on Ecuador’s geographical zones.
In one room is Amazon man with a blowgun who welcomes you into his jungle. Amazonian’s dress light and move silent as the animals they pursue. They live in thatched homes made from broad leaves and use nature’s pigments to decorate themselves.
Another room is dedicated to fishing people of the coast, and Galapagos, who wear jewelry made with sea shells and have fishing nets and boats that take them to their harvest. They wear simple clothes and use wood harpoons with iron points to hunt whales.
The Andes room shows colorful finely woven garments, mountains, terraced hillsides for growing corn and squash, alpacas and exotic looking llamas.
People live the land here.
The world changes, becoming standardized. Texting, television, internet and communications open propaganda to everyone, instantly. Standardized tests, standardized medicine, standardized zoning ,standardized construction, standardized money,standardized language drown us.
As the world becomes homogenized, we lose that which is important, for that which is expedient, easy, and makes someone else rich.
This morning, it rains.
Having an umbrella seems essential, but, even now, there are people walking to work without one.
Ladies in pants suits have raindrops form in their dark hair and drop down on their leather boots like melting black icicles.
Motorcycles speed by with drivers wearing plastic drop cloths pulled over their heads to keep them dry, plastic flapping in the air behind them like huge wings.
Within an hour, rain has moved through and the Earth’s sun comes out.
In Cuenca, the only difference between summer and winter is the amount of rain that falls. The weather this year is, as most people remark, nicer than usual.
Having weather co-operate is wonderful, but weather doesn’t take orders from us.
We sail the seas but we don’t control the currents.
Chocolate is a money maker for Ecuador.
Karana is a Cuenca chocolate shop that uses only the best chocolate ( arriba) and makes their own delights in a kitchen in the back of their showroom.
This business is located at the intersection of Guayas and Pinchincha and this morning, Andres, the proprietor, is pleased to show Tom prepackaged boxes of fine chocolates. He also slides out trays of little gem like taste bombs from showcases to build Tom a personalized box of tastes he can take home to his Aunt Priscilla.
A nephew who brings you chocolates from Ecuador is a keeper and I can see Tom and his Aunt both digging into her gift package while listening to ” Saint Louis Blues ” on a vinyl recording pressed in the 1930’s by Satchmo as a light Seattle rain washes the kitchen windows.
Tom, visiting family in South America, played piano solos at the jazz club last night, and, by chance, I ran into him by the Cathedral and tag along on his chocolate mission to Karana’s.
Little adventures happen frequently in Cuenca,
Serendipity is a huge part of this city’s charm.
Recent Comments