Life at Latitude 3

June is the season of my favorite Ecuadorian holiday – Corpus Cristi. I have never really been a holiday person, but I think I could live in Ecuador for the rest of my life and always and thoroughly enjoy CC.

For starters, it lasts about a week, and for that week, one gets to enjoy night skies filled with globitos. Globitos are small hot air balloons that are lit by hand with a bundle of twigs. It´s so enchanting to look up and find a path of several hundered of these globitos, drifting quietly and peacefully in the night.

While the globitos float along noiselessly, hoping someone will look up and notice them, the castillos demand immediate and complete attention. The word Castillo in spanish means Castle or Tower. In this case, the castillos are towers of bamboo poles, upon which are attached a ton of pyrotechnics, ecuadorian and azuay flags (azuay is Cuenca´s province, or state), one or two religious icons, and brightly colored tissue paper fan blades that spin and whir as the castillo gets going. Of all things Ecuador, I have to say that Castillos DEFINITELY make my top 5 favorite list. (the pollution from the buses, the word Chinita, or my boss at CEDEI do NOT make the list).

During CC, one walks to Parque Calderon, which is the heart of Cuenca´s historic section (where I live), and will find 2 to 4 castillos waiting to awe the crowd. and what a crowd. It can seem that every person in Cuenca is in Parque Calderon, buying the special dulces (sweets) that come out only for CC. In this respect, CC makes me think of Christmas. But CC also makes me think of any small town festival, like the Marigold festival, or the Strawberry festival, where everyone comes out with their families to flock around booths selling whatever foods are popular with festivals in that region – in ecuador those snacks being cotton candy, chifles (fried plantains), salchipapas (french fries w. a little hotdog), papipollos (chicken with fries), kabobs of meat, and much more.

Anyway – everyone is busy doing whatever, when you may notice that people are moving one of the castillos. I´ve never figured out why they move the castillos before they ignite them. it´s not as if they´re moving them to a more secure spot, or to a spot that be visible to more people. They will literally just move it about 10-15 feet to the right or left. I honestly think the only reason for moving it is to offer a visual cue to people to get ready, like dimming the lights before a show. So, you get ready, and then you hear that familiar hisssssssss. Immediately you sense a push and pull in the crowd – some people (usually with small children) drawing back, while it seems that everyone else is pushing their way in to get closre to the action. The thing w. a castillo, however, is that you don´t want to get too close. You can think you´re standing a safe distance away, and still be putting your life in risk. Risk of a firework jumping off the castillo and dancing right onto your head or risk of the crowd frantically pusing back into you. Of course, this is Ecuador, which means that there isn´t a firetruck, EMT, ambulance, or any sort of public safety agent present. But they are so fascinating, so captivating, that even if you´ve seen a hundred castillos, you still find yourself pushing, like everyone, just a little bit closer to see.

It goes off in tiers – the first tier will set off a small series of fireworks, which will get the fan blades on that tier spinning. the action will move up to each tier (there are usually 3 or 4). Once it gets to the top, if this is your first castillo, you may think it´s done, and start to divert your attention. But then you´ll notice that everyone else is still staring fixedly on the castillo. So you turn back, and then you notice that at the base, the castillo is spitting out thousand of little gold sparks. And you´re just about completely hyptonized by the dancing and light sound of the gold sparks, that you are completely jolted when the castillo really gets going. 4th of July style fireworks go shooting up out of the top of it, and the whole thing becomes a blur of spinning whirring sparks a flying activity. It´s one of those things that is very hard to describe, but if you´re ever in ecuador, and you see a large colorful structure made out of bamboo, stick around. believe me, it´s worth the wait. Castillos are generally between 2 to 3 stories tall. but according to my boyfriend, Pato, who has lived in Cuenca his whole life, in the past they were much taller, and even more spectacular, which is quite difficult for me to imagine.
I´ve asked sooooo many ecuadorians to tell me what exactly Corpus Christi celebrates. I, and most other spanish speaking gringos, could determine that it had something to do with the body of Christ, but past that we didn´t know. And we knew that it certainly wasn´t celebrating a town with the same name in Texas. But no ecuadorian could tell me. So finally I gave uo, and googled Holiday Corpus Cristi. Through that I learned that the holiday recognizes the Catholic belief that the host consumed at mass IS the body of Christ, and doesn´t just symbolize it, as it does for Protestants.

Rainy season was supposed to end in April, but continues yet with a vengeance. I dream of the day that I can leave my house w.o my umbrella and or raincoat, and not be aquatically castigated (punished). And those of us foreigners here in Cuenca are much more cognizant of the rain here than we would be back in our home countries, because back home we would be driving cars. But as none of us have, or really need, cars here, we walk. I walk, por lo menos, 3 miles a day, walking to and from my 2 work sites, and then more if I run errands or just feel like walking more. Generally during the rainy season here is what happens. You wake up and see clouds lingering in the east. In the southern hemisphere the weather comes from the east, not the west. Sometime in the afternoon all the clouds will get together and it will rain anywhere between 20 min to an hour. Sometimes more, but generally never for more than a few hours. And you rarely wake up to rain, as it seems to be an afternoon thing.
But the last 2 wks have broken the norm. Nearly every day for the last 2 wks, we gone to sleep to the sound of rain, woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of rain, arisen for the day to the sound of rain, and have had to deal with rain throughout the entire day. Yes, it has gotten very very old. It´s one thing to not see the sun for 2 wks, another thing to be wet and cold for those 2 wks because of the damn rain. While my friends and family back in the states are contending with 90 degree weather, I´m bundled up in turtlenecks and woolen sweaters.

Cuenca´s offical name is Santa Ana de los Cuatro Rios de Cuenca – Santa Ana of the 4 Rivers of Cuenca. There´s a saying here – if you want to build a city, build it on a river. If you want to build a good city, build it on 2 rivers. If you want to build a beautiful city, build it on 3 rivers. If you want to build a city like Cuenca, build it on 4. But dump as much rain into an area, and rivers will eventually have no choice but to swell and overrun their banks, which Cuenca´s rivers have just done. Cuenca´s province is Azuay, which has just declared a state of emergency. I watch the news at night with horrified awe – it reminds me of the Iowa floods of ´93. People wading up to their waists in water, huge trees being felled by the rapid erosion, schools and universities being closed because students can´t get in or out.

5 more weeks of work, and then I will be freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee – I will be getting out of Dodge (or Cuenca) for a MUCH needed vacation!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.