Today was a lazy day for us. Most of the town was closed down for Fat Tuesday (the day before the Catholic holiday of Ash Wednesday). While Rio and New Orleans have massive parades on this day, Cuenca goes into a mass hysteria of kids bringing out all their big guns. Everywhere you go are squirt guns, buckets of water, “silly foam” aerosols and even water hoses. This is clearly a major day for every kid in town to make wet and get wet.
We noticed today that there are almost no birds in town. Occasionally you may hear a bird call, and even once we saw a bird, but they are a rarity. The reason is that there are almost no bugs for them to eat. Seems strange coming from the San Francisco area, but this is a natural side effect of living at 8,500 ft elevation.
When wandering around town, we happened to meet the owners of San Sebas restaurant, on the San Sebastian square. We were told they opened 7 weeks ago, and we promised to return to try them out the next day (they were closed for Fat Tuesday too). It was interesting that they said they liked “Synergy Spanish” for learning the language, but did not like Simon Bolivar school because “they are too focussed on short term quick learning” — actually that sounds like an endorsement to me… 🙂
Wandering near the center square again in the late afternoon, we came across a fireworks scaffolding being built from bamboo. We decided to wait around and watch the show. As soon as Evelyn pulled out her pocket camera, a couple of young kids started clowning around for pictures. They loved to see themselves in the LCD display after Evelyn shot them.
Evelyn bought an “empty empanada” from a vendor on the square — an empty pastry shell with powdered sugar on it, freshly fried by the vendor. It was so good that we ended up eating half a dozen of them during the hour we were waiting.
We also talked to a few other people in the square while waiting. Once again, strangers in this town are easy to approach, and always welcoming and friendly. Before the fireworks, a family started sending up fire lanterns — paper lanterns with a small patch of burning hay suspended under them for hot air. Dozens lifted into the sky, as I wondered what would happen when they came back down, possibly with fire still burning…
Once the Big Show started, a pyrotechnics worker put a cigarette lighter to a fireworks spinner and ran. He repeated this a few times, with one of the spinners going out of control and landing inches from a family with several small kids. The only thing to do was run fast as he lit the next one!
After a few of these, he lit the major structure, which had several spinners, firecrackers, and sky rockets attached. He then dragged a box with roughly 30 tubes in it and lit that too. I was standing about 6 feet away, photographing the burning structure and this box exploding at my feet. When I finally thought to look up, I saw the standard fireworks exploding overhead, as you would see in any American fireworks display.
Except in the US, you don’t get to photograph it from 6 feet away. At that moment, I nearly regretted not bringing my “real camera equipment” for this scouting trip. Nearly, but not quite — this has been a great week to just explore and experience with only a point-and-shoot occasionally brought out mostly for blog photos.