Halloween Cuenca style

Halloween was great this year! A bunch of us traveled up to Cuenca to experience a crazy night of costumes and well....craziness.

It was a decent turn-out. We got screwed by the original hotel that was going to host us. They canceled on us last minute, and later we found out they stole our idea of a Halloween party and ended up hosting their own party to the public. Some were nervous about trampsing around Cuenca in our costumes, but it turned out to be a lot of fun and luckily Cuenca is a big enough city some people were dressed up too.

It was great seeing everyone and Cuenca is a great city. This was my first time there (it´s a 5-hour trip from Loja). Definitely want to make my way back. Got to see a Panama Hat factory, which Panama hats are originally FROM Ecuador. A bunch of churches as well; there are 52 churches, one for every Sunday of the year. Also got to see the Jefferson Perez statue. He is Ecuador´s claim to fame, their only Olympic athlete, won the gold medal in ´96 I believe, for speed walking...of all things. But the statue is actually really poorly made...poor guy did all this for his country and they made a really shitty memorial of him.

Here are some pictures!

Here we are as Clan MacGregor, a popular whisky brand here. It´s me, Grigs, Chris and Andy who lives in Vilcabamba. We were quite the sight walking around. I was the wench of the group.


Me and Alea, who is from my group. She lives in the province of Manabi, so she dressed up a a Manabita, wearing their traditional dress and a big flower in her hair.


Day of the Dead breads. They make these for the 2nd of November, representing little people. I´m not sure why they make them little people, but they eat them this time of year. I got gifted some yesterday, quite yummy! The tradition is that on the Day of the Dead, everyone goes to the cemetary to visit family members. They paint the tombs over and clean up the cemetaries.