The Christmas Parade on December 24th is the full Monte.
It is an all day affair with the parade route being prepared at seven in the morning and the end of the parade passing Calderone Park at seven in the evening. It is music, floats, dancers, walkers, Christmas religious scenes, traditional Ecuadorian dress, people watching, cars, horses, vendors selling food and drink, photographers, drones, flags, security, television cameras, children climbing over fences, sleeping babies.
Each neighborhood in and around Cuenca has an entry in the parade. There are smaller neighborhood parades leading up to this massive event, but this is the Mother of all Parades.
It is part religious, part ceremony, part showmanship, part outrageous. When you get this many people together there is no end to diversions and entertainment..
Closing streets and letting people dress up and parade without penalty is Cuenca’s Christmas present to itself.
There is a lively street art scene in Cuenca.
One can google Cuenca Street Art and find examples I haven’t met yet.
At an intersection where traffic moves from the Rio Tomebamba into the Historical District there are two skeletons on an exterior wall of a building cavorting amid a glorious cactus patch. The scene is reminiscent of ” Day of the Dead ” in New Mexico, a yearly Mexican celebration that sees skeletons come out and remind people of their mortality.You can bet the person on the other side of the glass in that anthropology museum, in front of you, didn’t know they were going to be an object of display when they joined the spirit world.
These two skeletons look full of life and the inscription above both reads ” Salud a la Vida. ” On one end of the art work is the artist’s first name signature ,” Juli 2015. ”
Just over the top of these skeleton’s grinning heads, in Plaza Otorongo below us, you can see a blown up Santa doll waving at street traffic and strolling tourists.
In a weird way, celebrating Santa is as weird as celebrating skeletons.
Fantasies and nightmares both come from deep places.
Within thirty minutes of Cuenca, right on the highway not far from Gualaceo, is an orchid farm that grows, cross breeds, and sells orchids worldwide to collectors and aficionados. Ecuador is home to thousands of varieties of orchids and Ecuagenera is a business that grows, researches, and promotes conservation of orchids in Ecuador and South America.
Orchids are epiphytes and attach themselves to trees, rocks, and other hosts. Interesting enough, there is one orchid that only needs light and water to survive. Andres, my guide,says people in Ecuador hang them in their showers instead of using a fan.
Ecuagenera, according to its brochure, ” does research to find the best cultivation medium for each orchid group and the best micro climate in which to grow them. ” In their nursery and showroom are gorgeous variations of color and shape.
If people are spending all this this time to come up with newer, stronger, more beautiful varieties of orchids, it is not inconceivable that some farmers would want to shape the human race to match their needs.
Humans don’t match up well to orchids.
Orchids just have to be themselves to be exquisite.
Walking through the Museum, and the grounds below, gives footnotes of the past.
All that is left of the past here are rock walls of homes and stone walls built to terrace land so crops could be grown on hillsides. The soil is deep, dark, rich, and, with light and rain, it is not impossible to see it feeding an Empire.
Standing on this hill, clouds seem like you can touch them.
It is hard to reconcile this peaceful place with human sacrifices but blood has always been how you pay Gods back for transgressions.
The Incan Empire grew through conquest and peaceful assimilation. They built roads, like the Romans, and developed infrastructure and capabilities to organize large numbers of people.
When you climb over hills, look out, stomp in the dirt and see water, flowers, birds, animals, you can understand the Inca civilization that grew out of nature.
The Incan Code was do not steal, do not lie, and do not be lazy.
We sacrifice humans today, but we do it in slower, more treacherous ways.
The Incan’s, very slowly, are starting to look less savage than I have been taught to see them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The road from Cuenca to Saraguro is two way but wide with shoulders on both sides, coming and going.
It winds up and over several large mountain ranges, in and out of valleys, over a few bridges, and, all the way, runs just below huge clouds scraping the top of the mountains.
Part of Ecuador is on the Pacific coast where driving is flat, part is in the Amazon where there are few roads, and the remainder is in the Andes Mountains. If you get motion sickness you take dramimina because even a good driver is not going to take bumps and grinds out of this highway. Looking out you see a patchwork of green, some cultivated and some not. As far as you see there are mountains, clouds, green, and so many hills and valleys that it would take a road man centuries to level them out with his yellow Caterpiller.
Today, Marcos drives. He is an Ecuadoran who worked in the United States and came home. Marcos can help you get a bank account, settle up with a Doctor, find you a good lawyer, or just explain how things work. Today, he gets Carol and I to Saraguro and back and that is worth a million.
Today, I am feeling like a sailor on dry land after months at sea. Riding in the back seat is no positive. When you drive at the top of the world, vertigo is your companion. This must be what it feels like riding a bull in a Texas rodeo.
Photos and words have a hard time doing justice to these vistas.
It was Carol who put this trip together.
When we first met, I was struggling up the stairways from the Plaza Otorango faint with food poisoning. She took the time to help a stranger.
She gave me a few drops of Dragon’s Blood, a natural Ecuadorian remedy for the “grippa. ”
I recovered and came back to say a proper “Thank You.”
Good people are close at hand but it sometimes takes food poisoning to find them.
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