New Years in Quito

Both in Munich and in Quito, people go all out for the New Year, but in Quito, we have an especially good view out over the city. So we got some great video footage of all the fireworks bursting over the city.

You can read our account of last year's New Year's if you forgot what we wrote about last year.

You be the judge. Here is our Quito vs. Munich New Year's Eve videos.

New Year's in Quito

One of the floats with effigies 

Wow, is this post overdue or what? Sorry! But still, it's good to tell you about all the festivities that went on in Quito around New Year's. We had just gotten back from the beach a few days before and took a walk through the "parade" of floats in Quito. Then, we met up with friends at a neighbor's place. You really can't start too much of the fun until midnight, but we passed the time well.

Yum, fried dough with honey!

Closer to midnight, we went to the local park for fireworks and more. One of the traditions here is to create (or buy) effigies of yourself, dress it up in old clothes and burn it at midnight. You'll see effigies being sold throughout the city and can include effigies of people from the past year, such as celebrities, cartoon characters (like the Smurfs or the Hulk), and politicians. This is seen as cleansing by burning the bad things from the past year to get on with the new year, all fresh and without constraints. We weren't organized enough so we just watched our friends burn their effigies. If you really want to start fresh, you're supposed to jump over the burning effigies. We were surprised that no one in our group got seriously hurt while doing that.

My favorite devil in the crowd - ferocious!

One of our friends brought fireworks and sparklers for us to shoot off at midnight. From our view, we could see miniature fireworks displays created by people like us all over the city. It was really cool to see and yet nice to be far enough away to not risk getting hit by an errant firework. Stuff like that can happen as we learned in Munich when people would get together at midnight as well to blast fireworks all over the city. Better to stay farther away and further up to see the best fireworks!

One last thing - during the day, throughout town, there were teens and young men who dressed as women and stopped traffic (literally) to beg for money. They're called widows of the old year. Some looked better than I do on a good day; others kept their mustaches, which ruined the intrigue.

Our favorite widows posing with a Chuckie effigy

I'm sure there's more fun that we had and traditions we saw, but that's about all I can remember right now.

New Year's Eve (Late's Better Than Never)

Before New Year's Eve, I wrote a post and then abruptly lost it (although Greg said he got it ??). In any case, it would have gone something like this:

Happy New Year's! We've had a great, jam-packed year and look forward to the next one. In Munich, they light fireworks [a severe understatement as you'll see below], eat little pink marzipan pigs for good luck and drink a special fire drink (although I don't know what's exactly inside).

Now, here's what I'll add to the above statement after actually going through New Year's Eve in Munich. It's insane. From the middle of the morning on, you could hear anxious party-goers begin lighting their fireworks. Greg even saw them light fireworks in the subway station. They were not environmentally friendly or safe when it comes to New Year's Eve, let me tell you.

We couldn't even think about sleeping until after 1 am because everyone on our street had to run out of their fireworks stockpile (enough for any small town USA, no joke). On the good side, we got to see everyone else's fireworks from the safety and warmth of our home. And enjoy we did!!

People had professional fireworks - not just the sparklers and bottle rockets common on the US' Fourth of July. They had the ones that curly cued and squiggled in glittery gold; bright, hot white sparks shot from a free-standing monsterous sparkler; green, red and blue pom-poms burst, then faded into sparkly dust; and streaks of all kinds of color launched into the air. Throughout all this, Scoots thought our house was under siege and remained alert in case he needed to defend his brown blanket.

I don't think I've adequately expressed just HOW MANY fireworks there were going off. From every angle you saw, fireworks were shooting out and they were so close because they were basically were our neighbors' own private fireworks show, every 50 feet or so. Halfway through the fun in the streets, the smoke from the explosions had already settled into a thick fog, obscuring the people below us and the kindergarten yard across the street. It was that crazy.

The Germans definitely rang in the new year with a bang... bangbangbangbang... bang.