Semana Santa in Cuenca
Due to a "lack of forethought and planning" (the phrase which comprises my middle name), we didn't realize that we were scheduled to move on Easter Saturday until we had booked both the Cuenca and the Quito apartments. Too late to change things up, we decided to make the most of it and do as much Easter stuff in Cuenca as we could.
On Tuesday we hit Feria Libre - a large market on the west side of town. There I found a hairdresser willing to buzz my head for $2. She seemed leery of my request for 'numero zero' buzzers, and asked us multiple times if we were sure.
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| Long-haired Hippie |
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| Getting better... |
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| There we go! |
The first real tradition of this week that we participated in was the "Seven Churches Visitation", where families walk to seven churches on Thursday evening. We started off at the new, main Cuenca cathedral, and went to various churches around the historic downtown. There are some beautiful churches in downtown Cuenca! The architecture, paintings, etc are just stunning.
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| The New Cuenca Cathedral. Photos do not do it justice, unfortunately. |
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| The Old Cuenca Cathedral. This one is much smaller, but is still stunning - the murals around the ceiling are gorgeous. |
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| The fourth church had an extra visitor |
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| Fanesca |
Another detail we were told about Fanesca is that it is prepared, and then shared with family, friends, and the needy in remembrance of the sacrifice of Jesus.
After the soup we had some fresh fruit juices - Orange and Strawberry for Maija and I, and Orange with "Tree Tomato" for Monica. (Not sure what the fruit is called in English - the direct translation is Tree Tomato. It is an oblong fruit, reddish orange in color, maybe 50% larger than a large egg. To me, it tastes something like a combination of a honeydew melon and a tomato.
Maija and Terran of course enjoyed their standard empanadas with sugar.
After breakfast, we wandered around the town a bit, looking at the artisanal shops. I found a man-purse that I liked, Maija found some alpaca blankets, and Terran finally picked up a stuffed alpaca doll (with little Alpaca earrings) that he has been seeing since Peru.
For lunch we went back to the mercado and had some rice, beans, and fried fish. (Due to a Catholic tradition, people don't eat meat during the holy week, so the normal pork, chicken, beef, etc is not to be found. Normally in the market there is row upon row of dead pigs, but this week all that has been replaced with dried and salted fish.) Maija did not miss the pigs, but she was not a fan of the fish either.
Later that afternoon we said goodbye to some friends we had made while living here, and caught the bus back to our apartment (on the holiday Friday the busses apparently stop running around 6:00, instead of the normal 10:00). There we met up with our AirBnB Host's family to go participate in an Easter procession ("Via crucis", or "Stations of the Cross" in English), where we walked with a large number of other people from a church to the top of a hill, carrying crosses and various other figurines.
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| We were around the middle of the procession. I would say that there were around 500 people in total. This was the small one, on the outskirts of town - we had wanted to participate in the main procession in the city center, but the location and late hour prevented that from happening. |
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| All the kids were holding candles. Every few minutes you would get a whiff of burnt hair. |
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| The procession completely blocked the road. |
Every few hundred meters we would stop, and someone would give a bit of a sermon on the loud speaker. (I didn't understand much of the sermons, but Monica assured me that it was all about marriage, comparing the difficulty of it to that of Jesus carrying the cross. I dunno... I wouldn't think His cross was that heavy, but what do I know...)
We skipped out of the procession after the first three stations... apparently the entire 14 stations goes until midnight, and I don't do well after 8:00 PM.
Tomorrow morning, bright and early we board a van for Quito, so the remainder of Easter will be celebrated there. However, this was a very cultural Easter week, the likes of which we don't really get to experience in Calgary.
Very interesting. Talk about an immersion into the traditions :)
ReplyDeleteThat is awesome!
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