Roman Candles

The small town we are staying in is La Merced and it is about 1.5 hours from Quito, the capital.  And for a small town, it is a bustling party this weekend—and apparently the whole month of September. It is the town’s anniversary celebrating its foundation.  Because we are in valley you can hear and see all the celebrations and random firing of Roman candles which to me is a nice welcoming atmosphere!  At least it is not like when I was in Mexico and they started firing canons in a parade below our hotel room at 4am for a similar celebration!

For dinner, I went out with Susana to a small café in the center of town where she introduced me to some typical and classic Ecuador foods.  The first was humita which is a mixture of mashed corn, butter, cheese, onion, and egg prior to being wrapping in corn husks and boiled.  Similar to it is quimbolito which is a sweeter version and was more like a dessert.  The 3^rd photo is bizchoco which is a corn dessert similar to biscotti.  All were delicious!

Humita

Bizchoco

Quimbolito

After dinner we walked around the streets of various street vendors and parties.  One in particular was a “pre-mass” party in combination of celebrating the town’s foundation prior to church this evening.  88% of Ecuadorians are catholic so many were participating.  There was a live band marching and many singing, dancing, and lighting candles before a statue of the virgin Mary as they were making their way towards catholic mass.