Christmas in Quito

Bill Stites asked, on X-mas Eve: what’s Christmas Eve like in Ecuador? fermented plantains and animal sacrifice?”

Food prep

But I didn’t answer at the time, as I was helping to cook a dinner for fifty.

Finn McCool’s does Christmas in style, taking advantage of what would otherwise be a slow day by feeding all the expats in need of a Christmas home away from home.  Since the locals all make a far bigger deal of spending Christmas Eve with their families rather than Christmas itself, the Ecuadorian employees and their families are invited in to the feast as well.  As I’ve missed cooking for lots of people, and the daunting task of such a tremendous meal was currently being handled by my friend Ursula (one of the proprietors of Finn’s), it seemed like a nice opportunity for me to help out with.

Barring the mashed potato incident with the Pikey chronicled in the previous entry, it was a mostly uneventful night as Ursula and I stayed up until around 4 in the morning preparing turkeys, hams, two kinds of stuffing, mashed potatoes, soup, gravies, carrots, cabbage and parsnips (a classic Irish X-mas, I’m told).  With Eimear, Monika and John (all Finn’s employees still on from the night before), we slept in the bar, taking turns checking on the turkey each hour until morning.  Calls are made to various homelands, as three different versions of A Christmas Carol play in the background on the television.

Ursula in the kitchen at Finn's

By 1 pm, people are arriving — both invited guests and impromptu ones, equally given free meals (though drinks are still to be paid for).  Santa entertains the kids, The Pogue’s “A Fairytale of New York” plays at least twice and hour, and then the heavy Christmas drinking starts.  And there was much merriment.

Christmas dinner

The heavy, post-dinner drinking begins.

A picture taken after submerging my waterproof camera in beer. It does a fairly good job of capturing what it felt like to be at Finn's on Christmas afternoon.

New Year’s Eve

Many locals that anticipated being elsewhere, myself included, all converged back at Finn’s for a night of celebration to close out 2008, which was by most counts a terrible year.  In keeping with said unpleasantness, I was mugged unsuccessfully on my way to Finn’s, half a block from a permanent police checkpoint at Plaza Foch that most agree is about as effective as FBI warnings at the beginnings of movies.  I should’ve been paying better attention, but my mind was elsewhere.  My hand was on my knife, however.

“Hey man, you want some cocaiiine?”

“Huh?  No.“   My mistake wasn’t answering, so much as being caught offguard, halting my steady walk towards Finn’s.  Now free of momentum with one man blocking me to the side, his friend moves in from in front of me and reaches into my pocket.

“What th– fff–?? Get your fucking hand out of my pocket!“  I stumble on my words, but yank his hand from my pocket with my left hand as I brandish the knife with my right.  It sounds incredibly badass, but I assure you this was done in the least intimidating way possible and still involve pointing a knife at someone.

My pocket rips slightly as his hand comes free, but the two of them back away as I hold the knife unsteadily at about waist height, point upwards, and I move backwards and to the side.  The one that reached into my pocket is yelling in Spanish as his friend holds him back, but despite the bravado he’s walking backwards slowly and won’t be coming after me.  I walk out into the street away from the crowd — because there is a crowd of tourists, locals, old people, children and everyone in between, all walking by as this goes on — and my eyes scan for anyone coming within ten feet of me.  The knife is still out, but close enough to me to avoid being noticed.

Happy New Year.

It’s not as wild as New Year’s past, or even as wild as Christmas here was, but other than the mugging, it was a nice enough way to roll out the old.

Ecuadorians are big into cross-dressing for some reason. For New Year's Eve, ostensibly straight men dress as women and panhandle in the streets. It seems innocuous enough but they've been known to cause traffic accidents when change isn't given.

Another tradition is the burning of effigies representing the old year. I expected to see lots of George Bushes and politically motivated effigies, but instead cartoon characters seem to be the most popular. Spider-man was burning rampantly in the streets of Quito.

Eimear and I had a nice sushi dinner before heading back to Finn's to finish celebrating