Imagine our delight, especially mine, to find the central square lined with candy and cookies. Cuenca turned Candy Land! It was a week-long celebration that combined the catholic holiday of Corpus Christi with the indigenous celebration of Inti Raymi or Summer Solstice.
The whole city turns up to celebrate the sweetness of life. People swarmed around the booths like hungry bees and gather baskets full of the sweets.
After a month and a half of abstaining from sweets because of my shingles experience I was excited to join the fun and chance a few samples of the bountiful sweets. Whoa! Could shingles be the cure to my lifelong sweet tooth? I was more than satisfied after a few bites and even then I was awake all night long with a soaring sugar high.
The celebrating didn’t end with the sugar frenzy at the booths, there were all kinds of candy themed carnival games to win even more candy. We did find a couple of food booths tucked off in the corner where a few folks were striving for a little internal balance.
Imagine a whole city in South America on a sugar high and then ask yourself, “What’s missing here?” .....Homemade Fireworks! Yippee! Freelance aerials were being set off by dashing young men (dashing as in running like hell to get clear of the fire) while families sent off hot air lanterns that floated over the city like large fireflies.
The ultimate display of fire power was the huge decorated towers engineered out of split bamboo to create a mesmerizing show of spinning shooting projectiles of sparkling fire.
And did we see any fire trucks or firemen stationed nearby just in case? No way!
As is always the case while Janet and I enjoy the chaos and cacophony of these events, when we see people gathering somewhere we join right in and always manage to get up close to the action. So when they lit the huge tower we were right there with Janet's iPhone in hand to film it. It was spectacular! Spinning, twirling, exploding in all directions including....gasp... a huge fireball headed directly at us! Of course we were wearing our brand new one day old jackets when this meteor peppered our shoulders and soared right across my chest. Now our jackets have tiny black holes with a meteor path across the front of mine. Oh well, just another opportunity to be creative and design some kind of huge patch to cover the firestorm damage.
