Saying goodbye to the old year with fire destroying the negative aspects of the prior year is a traditional way of celebrating New Year’s Eve in Ecuador. This New Year’s Eve appeared to be “the year of the jumpers.” There must have been a Zhumir (a locally made strong alcohol drink) or Pilsner contest, as […]
Cuenca: The Traveling Child
This was our 6th year following the annual Christmas parade in Cuenca, and we wanted to show the annual parade from a different perspective. This year, Burt captured the parade from his drone at 150 feet above the gazebo at Parque Calderón, as seen above. Many visitors lined up along calle Simón Bolívar both inside […]
Ecuador – Latacunga Mama Negra Festival
We have heard of the famous Mama Negra festival in Latacunga for years. This year Esteban Arevalo was setting up a trip to visit, so we jumped at the chance. As it turned out, we were the only two taking him up on the trip. Esteban took just the two of us as a result, […]
San Francisco Pride Parade
We were staying with friends in San Francisco in a houseboat near the AT&T park, and our niece told us that the LGBT Pride Parade was happening the same weekend. Though we lived most of our lives a short distance from San Francisco, we had never seen this parade before, which is one of the largest […]
Corpus Christi – Castles on Fire!
This week starts the annual Corpus Christi festival, which always starts 60 days after Easter. Though it is celebrated throughout Latin America, it is one of the largest parties in Cuenca, behind only the Paseo del Nino parade on Christmas Eve. There are fireworks every night for at least a week, and this time it […]
India 8 – Hola Mohalla
A few days after the Holi Festival, the Sikh hold a three-day celebration of Hola Mohalla. There was very little throwing of powdered paint here. Instead, the big event was a show of horsemanship, martial arts, archery, and military skills. The Sikh are easily identified as all men must wear a turban. Many of the turbans were […]
India 7 – Kaputhli Artist Colony
We visited an artist community in Delhi called Kaputhli. This is a group of some 300 families that was forcibly moved as a group from their prior homes, into temporary housing. They were promised “new and better” homes within two years. I’m sure you can guess the punchline — that was 5 years ago, and […]
India 6 – Holi Festival at Nandgaon
This is the third of three blog posts describing our experience at Holi Festival 2018. For our third day, we moved from Barsana to Nandgaon. Though many aspects of the festival are the same here, there were some very important differences — the biggest being the behavior of the crowds and lots of water mixed […]
India 5 – Holi Festival Part 3 – Barsana
This is the final of three parts describing our time in Barsana, India, during the Holi Festival 2018. People were frenetically dancing everywhere at all times, from early morning, until sundown when we left. Small bands of drummers would wander from place to place (upper-left and upper-right), and start a rapid staccato snare drum beat. […]
India 4 – Holi Festival Part 2 – Barsana
We spent two days in Barsana for the Holi Festival. This is the second of three parts covering those days. Holi powder is sold everywhere. We were told that only red and yellow should be used though, as those represent the upper caste, while blue and green were for the lower castes. After only a […]