The Quito experience definitely had it's similarities, but was also something quite different. The similarities go as far as stumbling around bars, being confused at when midnight actually is and outrageous amounts of alcohol, (keeping up the classy side of British traditions I will admit I vomited on my outfit).
NYE starts the day before, in making the 'muñeco' which translates as doll, or dummy. This is very similar to the Guy Fawkes tradition we have in Britain. You make the guy, and your burn it. Here the purpose it to burn away all the bad things from the past year, and bring in the new year with good luck. For this the muñeco also wears an item of each persons clothes. Ours also had a creepy face that we bought, as there are stalls and vendors selling muñeco faces, and even whole muñecos all over the city. We made ours with clothes and shredded paper, only adding the face.
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| A muñeco for sale |
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| Our Señor |
NYE night itself is something of an extravaganza. The streets are full of people, there are random stages everywhere with party music blaring out and stalls selling drinks and food lining the pavement. All of this was just in my 'quiet' neighbourhood in the north of the city, I can't imagine what the city centre is like. This is all well and good for the party atmosphere, then you spot a woman in the street gyrating on the bonnet of a car. Oh wait, in fact not a woman, a man, who seems to have nicked his sisters smallest clothes. This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. It is traditional for young men to use their sisters or mums clothes, put some make up on and just be extremely vulgar in the middle of the street. Whilst doing this they block all the cars until they hand over a few coins to be allowed to pass!
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| check out those buns |
These guys also hassle the bystanders for a few pennies, not a problem, but I didn't take any money with out me, but this wasn't good enough for one group of 'girls'. 6 of them picked me up, lifted me right over their heads then laid me down in the road in front of a car! They then proceeded to dance over the top of me, in the usual vulgar fashion, to the hilarity of the crowd and my family. They did duly lift me and and give me a pat on the back.
This is an experience I will never forget. Ever.
So to continue. Later in the evening we had a big dinner, in fact another christmas dinner. Accompanied by many drinks. Then headed down to the family bar for what was definitely too much vodka. By the time we went down it was about 10pm and we spent a few hours drinking before the big 12 to burn the muñeco! Health and safety laws don't really apply here and we set the thing alight in the middle of the street, as well as loads of fireworks. Oh and I forgot to mention we filled the muñeco with fireworks too. Safe. We drank and laughed and danced by the burning man, and did some jumps over him. Lucy couldn't jump over in her heels so Luis and I picked her up in tandem and jumped over the fire with her. In retrospect this probably wasn't the safest of vodka fuelled ideas.
The spent the rest of the night dancing to Latin music and drinking beers at a street party in the next road from ours, only going home when the people were thinning out and our feet couldn't take any more!
New year Latin style definitely made a change from the usual stumble vomit New Years i've had before (not that I don't enjoy stumble vomit, I certainly did plenty of that here too, and paid for it the next day). So i'd your'e looking for a real NYE beyond the realms of watching the London fireworks or queuing for 2 hours for a nightclub, get yourself to Quito to Bring in 2015!
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