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 […]
New Zealand 9 — Auckland and New Year’s Eve
This year we celebrated New Year’s Eve in Auckland at the iconic Sky Tower, in the rain. The 328 meter high tower lighting kept changing colors during the hour preceding midnight. Then there was the 10-second countdown. When we reached 2024, the cold fireworks emerged from the tower with a 5 minute spectacle of fireworks […]
Indonesia 15 – Java 5 – Bromo Festival
We showed some photos and a time-lapse of Mount Bromo and Mount Semeru a few days ago. The view was so spectacular that we figured it was worth repeating… ☺ The smoke fuming above is from Mount Semeru, which last erupted on December 4, 2021, and is the tallest mountain in Java. The Kasada Cultural […]
Cuenca New Year’s Eve 2022
It’s a New Year – Let’s hope the world can make the most of it and recover! A year ago was the first New Year’s Eve in more than a decade that we did not even create a blog post, because we were all locked down in our homes, to avoid further overloading hospitals with […]
Cuenca New Year’s Eve 2020
How can it be 2020 already? This was a date in the mist of the far off future. The one with flying cars, life expectancy extended to age 150, robots doing laundry, self-driving cars and permanent moon colonies. Yet here it is, and even more amazing, we’re alive to see it! It’s hard to imagine […]
Cuenca New Year’s Eve 2019
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 […]
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 […]
New Year’s Eve 2017, Cuenca, Ecuador
We celebrated our sixth New Year’s Eve in Ecuador, all but one of which has been in Cuenca (in 2015, we checked out Salinas). It seems that every year in Cuenca, the event has gotten smaller, and tamer. In 2012, there were half a dozen large staged exhibits in el centro, while this year we only saw […]