Easter in Ecuador

Easter in Ecuador is a big deal, but not in the chocolate egg kind of way. The majority of people are Catholic here and they closed off the streets on Good Friday to make a procession through the streets with 'Romans' riding horses, people tied to crosses, and others carrying statues of Mary and Joseph. It was quite amazing.

After watching that spectacle, we walked down the road to this incredible marquee set up in the street with hundreds of people milling around and eating a traditional indigenous Kichwa meal. I have never seen bigger pots or wooden spoons and I've certainly never before seen enormous plastic buckets filled with meat, tripe, chicken, liver, boiled blood – everything you could imagine. There were heaps of tables lined with people. We joined a table with our host family and ate wawamama (that's how it sounds, tho I'm sure its not spelt that way) and sague (they called it chocolate) but it was boiled blood. Oh my god! I was going okay with the wawamama, which was soup based with lumps of strange looking meat in it, until I got to this round lump of meat (??) covered in a membrane, which for all the world looked like a sheep's balls. I cut into it with my spoon and had a go but just couldn't have more than one bite! Of course the family had a good laugh at me and were happy to finish my bowl. After that, I tried the boiled dried blood, which I could handle, interesting texture! but Eva almost threw up, it was too much for her!

This is a little of what was happening...

The other traditional mestizo Ecuadorian Easter food is Fanesca. It is another soup based dish (Ecuadorians eat soup every day and they certainly know how to make it!) It was a lovely sort of creamy soup with about 7 different types of beans in it – incredibly healthy, but there have been side-effects this afternoon!

So that seems to be the main parts of Easter here – except for the protracted church celebrations which we didn't attend. We gave chocolate eggs to the family and told them about our tradition of giving eggs at Easter. The easter bunny doesn't call in over here.