Here are some more pics from the staging area of the Cuenca Navidad parade The parade lasted over eight hours. When we left the staging area, it was 10:45 and the parade had not yet begun (scheduled start was10:00 ya gotta love Ecuador).
We spoke with some gringos who live by the staging area (the Tomebamba river). They said that families began arriving around midnight the night before to setup and decorate their cars and trucks to transform into floats.
parade participants came from all around Ecuador, as well as Columbia, Peru, and other countries. Some traveled on horseback and entered the parade that way. In South America, different regions and towns have unique Panama (that actually originated in Ecuador) hats. Many of these are represented in our pics.
Three of us had cameras and took around 200 pics. These were edited and boiled down to around 70. I will post a few at a time over the next several posts.
Enjoy

Feliz navidad from Cuenca, Ecuador. It is in the 70s today and beautiful.
We went to watch the big Christmas parade this morning. They were expecting around 600 floats. We went to the staging area prior to the parade kicking off. Here are a couple of pics from the 150 or so that we took.
Wish all of you were here to see it for yourselves. Words and pics do not do it justice.

Today (hoy) Cuenca is imitating Western Washington. It is raining a lot. Unlike good ol' WW though, we know that soon the sun will return. Here are some pics:

Cuenca is full of surprises. Todays surprise came this evening when we heard sort of crashing/crushing sound. We both left what we were doing and began investigating our digs for the cause of the alarm. Eventually Jackie wandered into the kitchen and discovered mucho agua on the floor. Looking further, she found that one of our kitchen sinks had sunk. That is, it freed itself from the countertop and fell through the cabinet.
As it turns out our landlord was in the building for an owners meeting. He came up, helped clean up, apologized, drank a beer, told us it was his birthday, talked about his family and showed pictures, and arranged for repairs tomorrow. Nice guy. Not a great birthday gift.
Roseanne Rosannadanna always said 'it just goes to show it's always something'.
So true. Life in third world.
By the by, I went to the building meeting that was scheduled for 19:30. I arrived at 19:28 and ended up speaking with an Ecuadorian man who had plenty to say about a lot of things. We talked until the crowd was hushed at 20:06 to announce the beginning of the meeting. The first announcement was that the meeting was for owners only. I rose to leave and the man I had been speaking with said 'don't worry about it, you just can't vote.'
So I sat about three or four more minutes while nothing happened, and finally said 'I'm going'. My new friend agreed and we both left.
Hopefully he didn't go home to sinking sink. I did. Here's pics.