Cuenca Fiesta

Cuenca has a huge festival starting on November 1st and runs through November 6th.  It combines the Day of the Dead, celebrated here on November 2, and Cuenca's Independence from Spain on November 3rd, 1820.   There are tons of parades, concerts, arts and crafts fairs spread ALL over the city.  It was impossible to get to see everything.  Here are pictures of "The Peruvian" booths that were set up along one of the main Avenues along the Tomebama River.

.  .). 

We bought two rugs and two sweaters from the Peruvuian Ladies

The products are hand made, the young woman in the back is knitting a blue scarf.

We bought our rugs from this woman.  Every single one of them had JET black hair in beautiful braids.

I just included this to exemplify the height of most of these ladies.  Kinda tiny.

We thought their hats were so cool, if we could have bought one we would have.  Such detail!!

A curios shopper

We strolled down the river, in the background you can see another market that was set up for the festival. Mostly people from Otovalo. Behind Hazel and Wally the display materials for the artwork were being set up. The next day the street and park were covered in an assortment of artwork, and jewelery sellers.

Michael relaxing in Parque De Madre.  

Pretty little girl passing by on the Bus.


The next day we met our friends for breakfast in a nice, new little restaurant in the square pictured below.  An then we headed off to the parade.  Our friends had Spanish Class so they missed it.

Breakfast Pals.

They just looked too cool in their hats!!

The Parade Route.  It was supposed to start at 10:00, but this is Ecuador, it got off around 11:00.

Beginning of the Parade.

The following pictures mostly speak for themselves, beautiful floats, costumes, children and dancers.

The guy in the Gray jacket is the Mayor of Cuenca.  There were lots of Beauty Queens in the Parade.

Food was a theme on lots of the floats. This woman is holding a tray of fried Cuy.  Some of the floats were handing out cups of various traditional drinks, we passed on those.  A bunch of floats had special pastries taped to them also.  Some floats threw out beautiful roses.  We took those to the cemetery later that day (it was the Day of the Dead) and placed them on the a friend's fathers grave.

Michael wants this mask!!

Later that evening we grabbed the dogs and strolled down to Parque Calderon.

This little girl was fascinated with Velkey.

The next day we went to Parque Paridiaso to watch the Burro races.  They were supposed to start at 10:00, well we sat around and waited until 1:00 and there wasn't a sign of a single Burro, so we left.  A day or two later, Michael found this video on Youtube.  Looks like we missed a funny event.  I love the guy dressed as a "Burro" on his burro.  Too funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cokS4wOW4aw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

We went and visited a few more little markets on Friday.

We went back to Parque De Madre and the artwork was displayed.  Cuencanos LOVE the "new" Cathedral in the city center,  "Caterdal de la Immaculada Concepcion".  Construction began in 1885, I don't know when it was completed.   There all kinds of different artists renditions of the building. 

In a previous post we detailed our trip to an Organic Farm belonging to "Ferbola", he had a booth in a market selling his great products.  We bought some jam, more of his jerky and a kind of "relish" consisting of pickled carrots, onions, peas and peppers.  YUM.

It was a wonderful week.