We do on the 1st to a free music festival. We climb up yet another punishing hill (oh how I will laugh at the hills in England now), to find a park lived with colourful statues of humming birds, which Ecuador is famous for, and buzzing with children flying kites, little stalls selling Ceviche, various parts of pigs, soup and more of those delicious Ecuadorian sweets. There are several stages, some of which contain bands finishing off from the afternoons worth of performances, and lots of colourful bean bags on which people are lolling, chatting or checking their phones before the evenings entertainment begins. It looks just like summer festivals in England.
The first band up for the evening set is an exuberant set of about 12 men in white suits and panama style sombreros (if you can imagine that combination). Their music is vibrant and feels like a fiesta. There are wooden drums played like bongos, other long thin drums, like a drum version of panpipes, played with think sticks, a long thin wooden guitar like an Andean base, and two people playing flutes. And I do mean flutes plural. They each have a stand in which rest at least five flutes of different shapes and colours, including the famous pan pipes. They are all long hair, white teeth, huge grins and energy. Everybody in the crowd is jiggling their hips from their first number, despite it being only five ore
The second band is very different. It's style is to use regional instruments but set out Luke an orchestra. This means that whilst the music is good, the tempo drops significantly, and so does the temperature. We repair, like the philistines we are, to a nearby coffee shop where we have a nice sit down and a hot drink.
"Perhaps," says M, "we are getting old."
I don't reply, I am distracted by the hot chocolate 'with cheese' I ordered. I wanted to know if it really was cheese. It is. It is lumps of cheese inside the mug if not chocolate. I want it to be a revelation, a taste sensation, having seen it everywhere in Quito. But it's just some cheese in my hot chocolate. My palate is simply not refined enough. (The next day we try figs with honey and cheese. That, too, is indeed cheese. But oh, how it works. I will never eat figs another way.)
After our strange beverages, we head back to the festival in time for the final band, which describes itself as 'progressive folk'. We are not sure if we are not still too old, but once they take the stage, our reservations, and quite a few of our years, lift away from us. The band are older than the others and have been playing for 50 years. They are energetic, atmospheric, varied and interesting. They use their instruments to paint a different emotion, a different feel for every number and they make mW swell with emotion and jump up and down dancing with abandon all at the same time. It's a while since I have discovered a new band (to me, at least) I have liked so much. They are fairly famous, we discover, their name is Los Jaivas - look them up!
For me the star if the show is the drummer. She is female and very very good. Most of the really outstanding drummers I know are male, it seems to have grown somehow into a male forum, but she throws herself musically and bodily into the sound she makes. I can't take my eyes off her. Her energy and slim figure make her look much more youthful than I think she actually is, and I love that she wears a dress. Female drummers seem to feel the need to follow a very specific 'drummers' style. I like that she is unique in this.
We bounce excitedly home. We are not too old, we have decided, we just need the right music.
The next morning we are up early for a free yoga class, followed by a 'Hindu festival' (which doesn't materialise) at one of our vegetarian cafes we have eaten at before. The yoga is good, though the emphasis is firmly on meditation, with a few postures thrown in. I have a lot of time for the principle of meditation. Like prayer, I believe in stopping for a moment, stepping out of life's churning rhythms, and focusing on something bigger and greater. I am not completely satisfied afterwards because I have done so little actual exercise and my body feels heavy and unfit, especially having been for so long at altitude. But, as I remark to M, yoga does always manage to make me contemplative and peaceful afterwards, whether I have enjoyed the style or not. Pilates does the same thing - I think it is simply the act of focusing on something else.
On the third day, we take ourselves on a self guided walk in the Mariscol area of town, taking in the artisinale market. Like all of South America, this is replete with beautiful and bright items, and we want to buy it all.
We go to the Museum of Cultural Art, and learn the symbol used in, particularly jungle, art, for energy and for womb or heart. The latter, interestingly, is a frog symbol, the relevance of which is that the frog moves like a pulsing heart, and the Mother figure is considered the giver of life.
We learn of the Sapairs, spirits of the forest whose permission must be sought before undertaking any activity in the forest. We learn the story of one of these Sapairs, a condor like spirit, who used special magic stones to seek the whereabouts of food. A human shaman stole these stones. The condor asked why he should steal these stones and asked him to return them, but allowed him to keep one, which would show him where fresh meat could be found, the others were for decomposing meat, which would be of no use to a human.
I think the Sapair was rather generous.
We see many weird and wonderful shaman articles, including skulls, maraca type beads, round stones and so on, but without any explanation. What a shaman does, it seems, is obvious.
I think a little googling might be in order, later.
We see costumes see for different fiestas and shamanic or religious ceremonies. Some symbolise the struggle between good and evil, others a cleansing ritual for the soul.
Our Spanish is not quite good enough to fully understand everything we see and do here. We don't know the meaning of all the song lyrics, the full content of the lecture on meditation, or all of the background behind the items in the museum. But sometimes, you don't need to understand everything. In this mind blowing tour of amazing places, sometimes it is enough just to contemplate the blur of information, and just sit back and enjoy its colour.
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