Masks go on sale a few days before New Year’s Eve and are popular with old and young alike

New Year’s Eve in Cuenca, Ecuador is like no other we have experienced around the world.  This is our third NYE in Cuenca, and it seems to get smaller each year?  You can see our blog posts from 2012 here and from 2013 here.  This is now the blog for 2014, so you are already there…  🙂  As before though, there are so many photos to show that I will limit the text to photo captions.

Many elaborate tableaus were created with monigotes (aka ‘effigies’). 22 neighborhoods competed for the best display.

Several full sized monigotes represented various heroes or cartoons. The one in the lower right above won the prize as the best neighborhood monigote display.

People of all ages filled the streets from early afternoon past midnight

The judges for “Best Display” were dressed as clowns, while others dressed as clowns just to have fun

At midnight the monigotes are set on fire, after pinning notes of what the burner wants to leave behind from the old year.  Thus, the fires burn away the old, leaving room for a better New Year

Globos are outlawed since one landed on a church roof and burned it down in 2012. Our neighbor family sent one up anyway — lifting their hopes for the New Year into the sky