Entries about traditional customs

First stop on my final tour round Ecuador before I leave the country at the end of the month.

I touched down at 6.50 am after an uneventful TAME flight from Guayaquil. The airport that serves Loja is actually in the village/town of Catamayo, some 30km away; there were no buses running from there into the city so I had to share a taxi instead. Four of us paid $5 each.

There was a very fine drizzle falling when I arrived at Plaza de la Independencia in the city centre. Occasionally the sun came out briefly, causing a rainbow to appear. Plaza de la Independencia is surrounded by historic painted colonial buildings hanging over the pavements.

After a look-around there I wandered down the road to Plaza Central, popping into the Church of Santo Domingo on the way. An early morning service was going on though so I didn't stop to take any photos. Once I got to Plaza Central I went into the Cathedral briefly, but again I didn't take any pictures. There was a service going on there as well. I made a mental note to come back to both churches again later, once I had found a hotel and dumped my rucksack.

Next stop was a sorely-needed breakfast at a café. I tried a tamale Lojana, made of steamed corn like a humita but with shredded chicken, onion and a special reddish sauce in the middle. I think I will come back and have the same again tomorrow morning, because it was delicious. I had a humita and a cup of coffee as well.

After that I decided to try my luck with a budget hotel recommended by my guidebook - Hotel Metropolitano. I had no problems getting a single room; the hotel seemed almost empty in fact - I seem to have it almost to myself. The first thing I did was have an hour-long doze; I really needed this as I'd had hardly any sleep the night before.

The first place I went after that was the Museo de la Música, which I found on my second attempt. The first place I tried had the words Museo and Música in the title but turned out to be part of the University of Loja and did not seem to have any public musical exhibits... I wandered up some stairs which overlooked a courtyard, and looked at a selection of paintings. I looked into a room that looked open but there was a dance class going on inside it. I think it was the Arts department. Although I wasn't stopped from walking around, I got the unmistakeable feeling that I shouldn't be there, so I left and went two doors down to where the actual museum turned out to be.

It was very small and was about famous Ecuadorian musicians from the 19th century to the 1960s. Within the courtyard one of the rooms had a lot of strings players inside practising a piece, so maybe that museum was connected to the University as well.

The next stop was the wonderful Museo de Historia y Culturas Lojanas, which contained a selection of fascinating black and white photos of the pilgrimage of La Virgen del Cisne (the Virgin of the Swan) which has taken place every year for over four centuries, the figure of the Virgin being carried from the village of El Cisne to Loja on foot. It happens in August so I will miss the boat on that one. I took a photo of two of the pictures and then paid the price for it when a security guard came over, told me I coudn't take photos and then followed me around the rest of the museum to make sure I didn't take any more. Oh well.

I came across an empty but open auditorium with a woman having a piano lesson on a grand piano, and then a room full of information about and work of Lojana literary and musical figures. There were also two rooms showing off the traditional dress of Saraguro, a proudly indigenous town quite near to Loja; rooms of colonial religious art, which included a painting each of the Virgen del Cisne, the Virgen de Guápulo and the Virgen de la Merced; a room containing information about quinine bark and the Peruvian Jesuit who introduced it from South America to Europe in the 17th century as a treatment for malaria; an archaeological section containing pottery, photos of petroglyphs and some other things; and an exhibition of colourful contemporary paintings titled ´Los Colores de lo Absurdo´.

After that I had a late lunch at a grilled chicken restaurant, bought a chocolate bun to have later, walked along the oldest street in Loja looking at the colourful colonial buildings and then stopped in an internet café for a couple of hours.

The oldest street in Loja, Calle Lourdes:

In the evening I went back to the church of Santo Domingo. The interior was beautiful; I looked around for a bit after buying and lighting a candle for Dad.

I took some of the exterior too, along with the plaza:

Then I carried on to a restaurant by the river where I had another humita and tamale before going back to the hotel for an early night.

Edit from January 2019: I forgot to mention this originally, but the Historical Park is free entry! It's closed on Mondays and Tuesdays and is open 09:00 - 16:00 the rest of the week.

Parque Histórico Guayaquil lies on a peninsula that splits the Río Daule and Río Babahoyo before they converge to become the Río Guayas. It needs to be within quite a large area because is split into three zones; the Wildlife Zone, the Urban Architecture Zone and the Traditions Zone.

My colleague/ friend 'H' and I decided to go there together today because neither of us had been before, despite having wanted to for ages. I am starting to run out of weekends before I leave Ecuador...

The Wildlife Zone was first. It is split into the four forest ecosystems of the local Guayas province; Drizzle Forest, Tropical Dry Forest, Mangrove Forest and the Floodplain (Wetlands) Forest. As we wandered round, we saw lots of wildlife, some of them common but others critically endangered in the wild. The Guayaquil macaw is probably the most at risk of extinction; there are only about 90 breeding pairs left in the country. Aside from the parrots, my favourites were the harpy eagle, the horned screamer bird, the two-toed sloth, the tapirs, the collared peccary and the turtles.

In order, each row from left to right; peccary, chestnut-fronted macaw, more chestnut-fronted macaws, scarlet macaws, flamingo, green parrots, horned screamer, more horned screamers and flamingoes, more peccaries, two-toed sloths, Central American agouti, tapirs, mangrove forest, pond, caiman and more caimen;

From there we followed the path into the Urban Architecture Zone, which brings together several important wooden buildings which were built in Guayaquil in the very late 19th and early 20th centuries, then dismantled and transferred to the Park in the 1980s. These buildings were mostly built directly after the great fire of 1896 which destroyed a lot of the old part of the city. Most of them were residential, belonging to locally important people, but one was the Territorial Bank and one was used by the Social Services as a hospital, complete with chapel.

With all of these buildings, the upper storey is wider than the lower and is supported by columns. You see this basic set-up in the modern city centre; it makes a lot of sense in this climate. Shelter from the monsoon rain showers between January and April, shade from the scorching tropical sun throughout the rest of the year.

We were allowed to go inside some of the buildings, so we walked round one or two and admired the period furnishings and decoration.

We liked the views out of the screen doors (which acted as windows on the upper floors), too. The combination of colourful wooden buildings, cobbled streets and original street lighting made it easy to picture the Guayaquil of the early 20th century. One exception to this was the plane we saw flying low over the river, coming in to land at the airport opposite!

We stopped for a snack and a drink at a collection of booths and tables in the square in front of the old Social Services building, then admired some tortoises crossing the path on our way into the Traditions Zone.

This zone showcases the working life of rural, coastal people in Ecuador at the turn of the 20th century, when there was a boom in bananas, cacao and coffee. One group of people focused on is the Montubio, who to this day do a lot of ranching and hold rodeos, especially in Guayas province. The rodeo I went to last October in Salitre was a Montubio rodeo (you can read about this here). We looked round a colourful wooden landowner's house and a typical campesino (peasant) house made from wood, bamboo and wicker, admired a couple of peacocks and looked at aloe vera, cacti and many other aromatic, medicinal and edible plants within the ethnobotanical garden.

I most definitely recommend this place if you are ever in Guayaquil and have half a day to spare away from the city centre!

Emma, Mark and I had to head off to the airport at lunchtime today, I back to Guayaquil and Emma & Mark back to London via Amsterdam, so we decided to just wander around Quito Old Town in the morning and see whether there was anything particularly Easter-related going on.

After having breakfast and opening Easter things from home, we hopped on the Trolebus and got off at Plaza Grande, before heading to the Cathedral. Before going in Emma, Kate and I chose a candle (blue because it was Dad's favourite colour), I bought it and we then lit it inside for him.

While we were inside an Easter service started, somewhat startlingly with the first couple of lines of the tune to 'Joy to the World' - perhaps in Ecuador it's the tune to an Easter hymn? A little later on the cantor and congregation sang a hymn that we all recognised, despite it being in Latin American Spanish: 'When All the Saints Come Marching In'. It felt a little odd hearing a normally familiar hymn in a foreign language! Shortly before we left they started singing another hymn that was clearly Eastery because it mainly consisted of alleluias, though going by the tune and the proportion of alleluias to other words it wasn't 'Jesus Christ is Risen Today'.

On the pavement on the road to one side of the cathedral there were some artists working on paintings (in oils I think) with completed works for sale. It was interesting seeing them at work. Emma and I both bought a small painting from one of the artists. We then wandered up to Plaza San Francisco to see whether anything much was going on there. There wasn't really, but we did stop at Tianguez café and some of us had drinks. Kate and I had big glasses of thick, delicious, freshly squeezed guanabana juice.

After this we wandered round a bit more.

We went into a centre with a museum in it and, I think, the Ecuadorean national archives, but all we could find was a gift shop and a smallish gallery of religious art, so we didn't stay long. Then we made our way to the right Trolebus stop to get back to the hostel; as we passed through Plaza Grande we stopped to watch some traditional dances that were being performed.

After getting off the Trolebus at the other end, we nipped into a branch of 'Oki Doki' convenience store for me, Emma and Mark to stock up on snacks for our flights. Then a quick stop back at the hostel to finish packing, check emails and have a lovely unexpected Google Hangouts video chat with Mum, before Emma, Mark and I left for the airport. It was sad saying goodbye both at the hostel and the airport. Their flight left before mine did. Kate and Andrew were staying in Quito for the night and flying back to the UK the next day.

I was the first of our group to sit down for breakfast this morning and while I was waiting, I experienced an earthquake tremor! Just a minor one but I did feel the earth shake a bit and coffee cups rattle on the table. Then Kate arrived and just as she was agreeing that it must have been an earthquake, it happened again and she felt it.

After breakfast we got a lift in the hostel's minibus to one of the bus stations, where we hopped on a coach to a town north of Quito called Otavalo. It is famous across South America and beyond for its street markets, in particular the big handicrafts market that reaches its apogee on Saturdays. It took over 2 hours to get there and the scenery was spectacular.

On the way there some ice cream sellers appeared on the bus at different points - Kate bought a coconut ice lolly (the best ice lollies she had ever had, apparently) and I bought a lovely chocolate one.

We knew there was a morning animal market in addition to the handicrafts market and the daily market, so we made a beeline for it as soon as we arrived. Before we did that, however, we had to go on a toilet hunt. We looked inside the church on the main square - it looked really interesting so I will definitely look round it properly when I come back here with Dave in June - but they didn't have any toilet; luckily, after we had exited from there Mark then spotted some public toilets nearby.

Market sellers had spread across the town even outside the official market areas, so there was lots to see on our walk. Unfortunately the animal market had mostly finished by the time we got there, so almost all the big animals had been sold other than a few sheep, but we did see little pens and cages of guinea pigs, pigeons, chickens, ducklings and a rabbit.

Next to the market I noticed a stand making and selling the same type of delicious batter things that I saw in Ambato at Carnival, so I bought and ate two; then some of the others bought one.

Indigenous Otavalo people still wear traditional dress and take great pride in it, even the young people who you'd think would more likely to wear modern clothes. Everywhere we saw women wearing their traditional bead necklaces and bracelets, distinctive white blouses with elbow-length flared laced sleeves and flower or other embroidering over the chest area, dark skirts, coloured bands round the waist and hair tied back with a cloth band. We also saw some men wearing their traditional clothing - white trousers, dark ponchos and hats.

On returning from the animal market we explored the daily market a bit more. This was extremely untouristy, filled with butchers' stalls, lunch counters, fruit and vegetable stalls, general stalls with tins and packets of food as well as sacks of maize, flour and other grains, and stalls selling non-edible household goods.

While walking past one of the lunch counters Kate noticed that it sold 'cuy' - guinea pig! The others all decided to have some for lunch but I originally decided I wouldn't, because I knew it would be fried and I've had that before in Bolivia five years ago; I remember thinking at the time that although it was nice fried, I'd have it roasted or as part of a stew the next time.

Guinea pig is expensive in Ecuador so the others decided to have just one between them. They sat up at the side of the stall on an inbuilt bench and waited 25 minutes or so for the dish to be prepared. At one point one of the women at the stall asked if they wanted to take photos of the guinea pig being cooked, so Kate went over and took a photo. Apparently it was indeed being fried in a pan, was flattened a bit and didn't have any fur on it - the same as what I had in Bolivia. When it arrived they each got a quarter on a plate along with toasted corn, some sort of boiled corn, tomato and onion salsa, potato in some sort of sauce, some tomato and lettuce. They also brought me out a plate and we thought that it was included in the $25 we'd paid for our meal, so I accepted. It was tasty but somewhat hard to get the meat off the bones. Of course, once we'd all finished eating it turned out that it wasn't included after all, but it still worked out as $6 each which was pretty good value.

The famous handicrafts market (Plaza de Ponchos) was our next destination. I was tempted by a lot of things but didn't buy anything because I knew I would be coming back here in June with Dave. I can tell I will be loading myself up then! Kate and Andrew bought a lovely piece of artist's work that they plan to get framed and put up in their house, Kate also got a little carved stone turtle keyring and Andrew bought something that he thought was a carved wooden axe-shaped ornament that turned out to be a pipe. Emma and Mark also bought things but I've forgotten what they were.

Instead of going straight back to Quito, we then caught a bus to the town of Cayambe.

While I was working in Guayaquil, Emma, Kate, Mark and Andrew left Cuenca for Baños on Tuesday, spent a full day there and got a bus to Quito yesterday. I spent last night at José Joaquín de Olmedo International Airport in Guayaquil because my flight to Quito was at 6 am and I thought it would be much easier just to get a taxi from work when it closed on Thursday night than it would be to try and find a safe taxi at 3 am on Friday morning from Alborada.

The flight was uneventful but I did get some good photos of the mountains and a snowcapped volcano near Quito - probably Cotopaxi Volcano.

The hour-long taxi journey from the new airport to the hostel was also uneventful. I was joining the others at the same hostel where Mum and I stayed in February; I arrived at about 08.30.

The main aim of the day was to go into Quito Old Town to view the world-famous Good Friday procession, which we thought started at midday. We got the Trolebus and duly arrived at Plaza San Francisco, where the procession would begin, nice and early at around 9:30. There were more people than normal around even at that point, including lots of police, and there was a Catholic radio station playing on loudspeakers.

We were wondering where to stand to get the best view, then noticed that on the raised ground along one side of the square, directly in front of San Francisco church and monastery, people were sitting on the wall with their backs to the main square. This made us think that the procession would probably go along there, so we made a beeline up the steps and found a good position next to the wall. It was wonderfully sunny at that point and there was a really good atmosphere, full of anticipation and preparation.

From our raised position we had a good view over the square, and on and to the side of the raised area we could see preparations apace; some big wooden crosses propped up in a couple of places, men holding brass band instruments and penitents wearing their costumes of mainly purple robes and purple pointy masks.

At around 10:30 am we, and everyone else on the raised area, started to be moved by police, which disappointed us because we wouldn't get as good a view from the ground. I think it was because part of the procession was going to emerge from the front of the church. Anyway, we descended into the main part of the square and found a position by a road on the opposite of the square, where lots of people seemed to be congregating. Then we started to see bits of a procession going along one of the other sides of the square, and realised that the procession had started an hour earlier than expected and wasn't going along our road after all!

The crowd was thick by the edge of the relevant road, but some of us managed to squeeze through to the front (or near the front) and get a few photos. The procession mainly seemed to consist of the penitents (some of whom held crucifixes, pictures of Jesus or Mary etc.), men dressed up as Jesus carrying along the big wooden crosses I'd spotted earlier, and brass band musicians playing a couple of tunes I didn't recognise.

Kate says that at one point and a couple of times later in the day she saw a couple of the penitents flagellate with ropes tied round their waists, though only lightly by the looks of it so it wasn't harsh to watch; I saw chains dragging from some of the penitents' ankles.

The day then went downhill for a bit because Mark had his wallet stolen. He'd had it in his pocket rather than in a bag. The police didn't speak English but he managed to find a tourist security place nearby so went there. Meanwhile Kate and I found Emma and, when walking along, found Mark at the security place. Kate and I didn't know where Andrew was in the crowds but Emma said that he'd said to meet up at the Trolebus stop if we got split up. With that in mind, Kate and I then took Emma to an internet cafe with phone booths to cancel the stolen cards while Mark stayed at the security place to sort stuff out there. The procession had reached where we were so the crowds were quite hard to fight through...

...but luckily we found the internet café not far away. I hung around outside Emma's phone booth while she made calls and meanwhile Kate fought her way through the crowds to the Trolebus stop to see whether Andrew was there, but he wasn't so she came back again. Once all the cards were cancelled we went back to the bus stop and waited for quite a while to see if Andrew would turn up, but he didn't so in the end Kate got the bus back to the hostel to check whether he'd gone back there. Luckily she found him nearby the hostel so they came back into Quito Old Town and met up with us there.

Things then improved further, because while Kate was gone Emma and I had lunch, a special Ecuadorean Holy Week soup called 'fanesca'. Once Kate and Andrew got back they had some too but at a a different place. It was lovely - among other things it contained twelve different grains/pulses to symbolise the twelve apostles, half a boiled egg, dried cod, some little hard-baked bread things, a miniature empanada, milk, plantain and vegetable stock. Emma and I didn't get any accompaniments with ours, but the others did; plates of molo mash (potato mixed with milk, cream and possibly garlic and onions, served on lettuce leaves and with half a boiled egg and some spring onion sliced lengthways on top), and a dulce de higo each (a whole fresh fig cooked until lightly candied in a spiced brown cane sugar syrup and served with the syrup and a slice of queso fresco (white softish cheese). Figs are a traditional Lenten food and eggs, fish and cheese are fasting foods, so it was all appropriate for eating on Good Friday.

After lunch, after walking up a street through which a shrine was moving with lots of people walking alongside or watching from the roadsides...

...we all went back to Plaza San Francisco to visit Tianguez, an amazing handicrafts shop that I visited with Mum in February. The shop extends into catacombs under the monastery and contains all sorts of handicrafts, pottery, woven items, etc., as well as Ecuadorean coffee and other things. Some of the catacomb passages have interesting information about the traditions and meanings of the items made by particular tribes.

Following this we were all tired so we walked to Plaza Santo Domingo to get the Trolebus back to the hostel.While walking through Plaza San Francisco Kate pointed out that the shrine had ended up in the open doorway of the monastery, and various nuns and monks were standing around on the raised area in front.

In the evening we had dinner at KFC (only the second time I've been there in Ecuador) and checked our emails.