Feliz Año Nuevo – Happy New Year 2025. New Year’s is an important holiday in Ecuador and other parts of the world. The tradition is for Ecuadoreans to say goodbye to the past year’s misfortunes, and make plans for the New Year by burning monigotes at midnight, symbolizing the past year. Monigotes are large dolls […]
Ecuador 2 – Pase del Niño Viajero 2024
Pase del Niño is considered the largest parade in Latin America, depicting the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. This year, it was estimated that 200,000 viewers watched from the sidewalks, rooftops and balconies, with as many as 50,000 participants. At the start of the day, there was a mass on the morning of […]
Ecuador 1 – MIPA Pyrotechnics Museum
For the last event of the year at IdiomArt, Sarah HB, the director of the Cuenca Intercultural Community Center (AKA IdiomArt), set up a tour to Gualaceo, just outside of Cuenca, to see where one of the 50 families in the area makes fireworks for various festivities around Ecuador. MIPA – Museo Interactivo de Pirotecnia Artesanal en Gualaceo has […]
Drone Over Cuenca
Years ago Evelyn let me have my first drone. It was fun to fly, but I was very new at it, and the flight electronics were adequate at best. I crashed that poor drone a few times on the Ecuadorian coast, and many other times in Cuenca, including one time it nearly hit a parade […]
New Year’s Eve 2022 in Cuenca
New Year’s Eve in Ecuador is unlike anything we have seen elsewhere in the world. Though muted this year, compared to many pre-COVID years, it was still worth a walk around town to see the creative minds at work. Every year, families and groups create their own manigotes, which are paper maché dummies in various […]
Christmas 2022 in Cuenca
The Christmas Eve Pase del Niño Viajero parade used to be massive, lasting for 8 hours and involving at least 20% of the city’s citizens. COVID put a sudden and unexpected stop to the continued growth of this parade in 2019, with the parade being forbidden in both 2019 and 2020. Last year, in 2021, […]
Cuenca Soup Kitchen Christmas 2022
Last year, in 2021, we volunteered at the Cuenca Soup Kitchen by offering professional portraits of all the kids they help, to give to their parents. We came back to Cuenca this year just in time to do it again. The Cuenca Soup Kitchen has grown to support some 250 families, and we ended up […]
Video – Living in Ecuador as an Expat
Since joining the Eyes of Hawaii photography club in Honolulu, several people were asking me about what it was like to live in Ecuador. Being a photography club, I decided the best way to explain it was by creating a slide show / video for them. In looking over our photographic resources from our living […]
Video – Festivals in Ecuador
Since joining the Eyes of Hawaii photography club in Honolulu, several people were asking me about what it was like to live in Ecuador. Being a photography club, I decided the best way to explain it was by creating a slide show / video for them. In looking over our photographic resources from our living […]
Living in Ecuador as an Expat (video)
We have begun to get settled into Honolulu, and establishing our routines here. One of my personal routines is membership into the Eyes of Hawaii camera club here. At the request of members, I have created a couple of narrated slide shows. The most recent slide show, that will be shown in August, when we […]