Mar. 21 - Good Friday Procession

The main reason I wanted to stay in Ecuador for Samana Santa was to be in Quito for the Good Friday procession. It was supposed to be the best Easter celebration in Ecuador. So Anna and I joined some people from the hostel and headed down to the historic centre of Quito with what appeared to be everyone else in the city.

Even though we arrived early for the procession, we were quite nervous that we woudl be late, because when we arrived the street was already filled with people in the parade. It turns out there isn't enough space in the old city for a staging area, instead everyone is forced to set up for the parade in the street. This takes up a sizeable amount of space as there were easily more than 2,000 people in the procession.

Not long after noon the parade started. The vast majority of the participants were Cucurachos, people dressed in purple from head to foot and wearing a cone like cap that covered their faces. They were all participating in order to absolve their sins from the past year and most were carrying a picture or statue of either Jesus or the Virgin Mary. There were literally thousands of them; men, women, young and old.

The other participants in the procession were dressed as Jesus and carried crosses, some of which were so heavy they needed help from other people in the parade. Some of these men were even being lightly whipped to symbolize the suffering of Christ.

We were so taken by the procession that Joe and I decided to find the front of the procession and join it. Armed with our cameras we knew that we would have no problem breaking through the ranks of spectators (estimated to be more than 500,000 people) to actually join the procession.

We were right. The police and people had no problem with us being around with the procession (we actually were ignored by the police when we were in the middle of the parade, but when we were on the side we were asked to step back). We were able to take so many great pictures, especially of a man who against the advice of the paramedics surrounding him, insisted on carrying his cross. Later that night when I transferred the pictures to my hard drive, I didn't notice that only a handful had transferred before I deleted them all .... I won't make that mistake again.

That night, all of us went out to the Coffee Tree for one final night in Ecuador before my flight to Lima the next day.