The use of superlatives in my descriptive vocabulary tends to be on the scarce side. Perhaps it’s a British thing (“that’s not bad” = good). Or perhaps I’m just hard to please. In any case, all of that is about to go out the window… NYE in Quito was the BEST New Year’s celebrations I’ve experienced in my time on this planet.
If you’re in the lucky situation of being in the area around December/January and want to pick a spot to celebrate the arrival of the new year, I can wholeheartedly vouch for the capital city of Ecuador.
Read on below for my diary entries:
31/12/16 Quito, Ecuador
Moved to Secret Garden hostel today for NYE. It’s really funny how the traditions for NYE here are so widespread and unique. Men dress in drag and stop cars to ask for money. Mike got stopped in the street yesterday and was asked for ‘un beso o un dolar’ (a kiss or a dollar). Apparently the tradition came about because there was a plague in Quito that wiped out a large percentage of the male population, so all the widows would dress up and ask for money from passing traffic. The men thought it was unfair (cue dramatic eye roll) so started doing it too.
Burning dolls is another tradition they do here, to get rid of bad año viejo juju vibes. Or maybe just an annual excuse for some socially acceptable pyromania.
01/01/2017 Quito, Ecuador
Yesterday was the best NYE I’ve ever experienced. All the Ecuadoreans get so into it and there’s a really close family/neighbourhood atmosphere. Went out for dinner with an Australian guy from the dorm because the hostel food didn’t look too appealing (carrots sticks and empanadas). We walked around for a bit and finally stumbled across this tiny doorway with a couple of policeman sat having dinner. It was an Afro-Caribbean/Ecuadorean place and there was a larger room inside, through a little courtyard*. I had a fish curry in coconut sauce that came with rice and plantains, it was delicious. There was also a super cute black puppy called Rocky, who kept coming under the table to say hello.
We then went back to the hostel and had some drinks with everyone else. I decided to go to Community Hostel to say hi to Yuka and Mike, who I’d been in the Galapagos with a few days beforehand. Wesley (Irish guy) and Jarryd (the Australian) came with and we bumped into two Danish guys, Peter and Daniel, on the way out. They also joined us on this excursion. On the way, we passed a small crowd of people on the street with three men in drag dancing around and stopping cars. They grabbed all the guys I was with and tried to dance with them. It seemed like I’d set them up for an ambush. The men who had Peter and Jarryd properly jumped on them and started daggering them, it was really funny.
Community was dead so we went back to our hostel. Another dude in a boob-tube came over and asked me to be his accomplice for his roadside hold-up (maybe the fake girl thing wasn’t working too well). He gave me one end of the string and together we stopped a car driving down the road. Job not yet complete, he gave my end of the string to someone else and they start swinging it round in circles, asking me to get in the middle and skip. Luckily, years of my childhood spent playing on the street in Holland had trained me up for this very moment. I managed to keep going for about 20 seconds but then I remembered the driver was probably trying to get somewhere, so I stopped (the physical exertion at 2850m altitude was also a factor in this decision…). We hi-fived, celebrating our Bonnie and Clyde moment, and our group continued hostelward bound.
On the street outside our hostel, an Australian guy wanted to set off some fireworks (classic Aussies abroad) but wasn’t succeeding. A neighbour, who was busy building his own little bonfire for his NYE papier-mache dolls came over and showed us how to really play with fire.
I went over and had a look at his dolls/bonfire structure. He explained that it was dedicated to the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that had happened earlier that year in April that destroyed 40% of a coastal town nearby and killed 400 people. It was really interesting seeing all these facts written out on paper to be burnt, for nationwide support and solidarity. In with the new and out with the old.
On the stroke of midnight, all the doll piles along the road were set alight. People also released paper globes into the air with their hopes and wishes for the new year. Everyone was taking part in all this, from the old grandma kicking the bonfire whilst holding onto her walking stick, to the little girl carrying a doll even bigger than herself to throw onto the fire. We then danced around in a circle with all of the neighbours, singing and laughing, swapping partners and sharing jokes.
*I can’t remember the name of the restaurant as it was so tucked away but it was either on Manabi or Jose Joaquin Olmedo, not too far from where these two streets intersect onto Guayaquil (one of the main avenues in Quito)
