Viva Cuenca

The celebration of Cuenca days was quite fun, though we also missed a fair amount, since we had two papers to write.

Anyways, the first highlight was the craft markets. There were artesians from Cuenca as well as Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Spain. I loved just looking at everything that they had. There were just so many that I discovered new things every day.

Monday afternoon we went to the burro race having no idea what to expect. It ended up being a huge deal with tons of people completely circling the track. We were right on the corner and Coral was worried that the donkeys might be going too fast to make the turn and run into us. She needn't have worried. The donkeys weren't going that fast, and it turned out that they weren't the main highlight. Instead, their riders were wearing all sorts of costumes: clown, priest, drag. It was hilarious to watch, especially when we weren't expecting it!

Another highlight had to be the fireworks on Monday night. We had been warned that they were a bit extreme, but we thought it had been hyped up... until we saw them. First, there were the globos, which are similar to the tissue paper hot air balloons that I made in 6th grade, except that they used actually flames to carry them into the sky until they were almost indistinguishable from the stars. Then, there was the vaca loca, which was probably the highlight of the evening. It's a paper mache cow with fireworks attached. One guy runs around carrying the vaca loca over his head once it's lit. Basically, he runs at the crowd while shooting fireworks are shooting of it. We definitely got charged as streams of sparks were exploding from the horns. Of course, after this is a sort of tower that is also covered in fireworks, but most of these are attached to pinwheels so that they are going off in crazy directions, though of course, always towards the crowd. There was a lot of crouching and huddling in fear.

Tuesday was the actually holiday, and I went to one parade of dancers. It was nice to watch the traditional dances, and the girls' skirts were marvelous for spinning!

Oh yeah, there was lots of food for Cuenca days, most of it fried. I finally tried cuy (guinea pig). It was okay, but nothing that I would seek out.

Basically, Cuenca days were a great time to wander about town, find new places, and have fun experiences! Though I'll probably be fine if I never have fireworks shooting directly at me again.