This is quite a week to be in QUITO............
All week is leading up to December 6-- the day Ecuador celebrates the Independence of Quito from the Spanish in 1534. It is a national holiday......and it is a HUGE party in downtown!
We are a little removed from it in the Tumbaco Valley, but we needed to go into the city a few times this week to get our vehicle registered; so we were able to see just how crazy it can be.
There are street vendors everywhere. They are selling all kinds of things. This is a special week for the TOROS. For just this week, there are bullfights in Quito. Outside of the bullrings, there are rows of booths selling hats- every kind of hat imaginable, for the people going to the bullfights. Jeff and Lukas each bought a hat. In Ecuador, at street vendors, you are able to negotiate for the true price of an item. Deanne can bargain with the best of them. Jeff...well he just walks away when the bartering begins. If he wants it, he buys it. If he want's it cheaper, he calls Deanne.
There is music playing in the streets. We even saw mariachis singing in a auto repair place. That is a new twist on culture for sure. We have also enjoyed all the little vendors selling Christmas decorations that have shown up everywhere. They built little shacks just for the month and live there while selling their wares. Yesterday, we found several locations to buy Christmas trees. When we got out of the car, we saw that all but two of thh trees were artificials set up on the lot. The live trees are cyprus trees quite different from the evergreens of North America. All of this is quite new to Ecuador-- as a developing country.
We are learning quite a bit about our new country and it's culture. Thank you for sharing in our journey with us.
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