As Kate previously posted below, we spent New Year's Eve in Cuenca, a beautiful and historic city. We stayed in a garden apartment near a river, close to the historic section. To celebrate the New Year, Ecuatorianos celebrate with late night/early morning partying and the burning of "manigotes". Below are a few pictures of some police/military "manigotes" which passed by our apartment. Manigotes are stylized figures often made out of paper mache. Manigotes often represent fictious characters, actual public figures or personal friends. The purpose of burning them is to purge sins/bad luck and make a fresh start to the New Year On New Year's Eve we toured the historic section of town and saw lots of manigotes with Ecuatorianos preparing to celebrate with music, dancing and drinking. Consistent with our parenting style of early morning risers, we were happily in bed by 10 PM and missed most of the revelry. Which is something we are not able to do in Guadalupe. When we returned to Guadalupe, we heard that our adopted home town partied in the central square (a block from our apartment) until 6 AM
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| feeding a deer at the Cuenca Zoo |
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| transept of New Cathedral in Cuenca |
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| other transept of the New Cathedral |
Main alter of the New Cathedral
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| Emmett and Annalise playing in the river |
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| Looking at a parrot at the zoo. |
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| police and army manigotes |
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| burning the manigote which represented "Javier" the apartment manager |
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| our neighbor partaking in the tradition of beating the manigote with a stick |
This is interesting, John. But it does seem a bit weird to beat the apartment manager with a stick!
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