This is my last letter from Ecuador at least for this trip. We have decided that we are coming back to Cuenca for a longer stay when we sell our house. It seems like a place that we would like to live, but that decision will take a longer stay than a just a one week visit.
Ecuador is a very religious country, as Toni’s photographs of the processions on Good Friday suggest. They are more similar to Spain’s celebration of the Holy Week than that of México, even more so in Quito where they wear both the robes and pointed caps. In the downtown area (the casco) where we are staying, you can always see one set of tall, white steeples of one church or another no matter where you walk. The churches dominate the city. Cuenca was founded in 1557, and the Spaniards began building their first cathedral ten years later, using the stones from the Inca town, Tomebamba, that preceded it.
There are Protestant Evangelical churches here as well, but there doesn’t seem to be the conflict that there was in Guatemala, where you could go to small villages and see competing religious slogans painted on the walls and where some restaurants would proudly not sell any alcohol because they were the “Christians.” Perhaps, 
as we get out into the countryside, we will see more of the war between the Evangelicals versus the Catholics. I hope not, as I am actively non-religious. People can be anything they want, as long as they don’t try to convert me and as long as they sell me a beer when I want one. After all, beer is one of the few things that are sacred.
Of course, our assessment of Cuenca might be somewhat stilted, as we spent a number of our days here visiting the municipal cemetery. Toni continues to work on her series of photographs of graveyards and funereal statues that she began in New Orleans seven years ago. Since then, we have become connoisseurs of cemeteries.
My main role in these cities of the dead is to act as Toni’s “bodyguard.” I use quotes as I usually have my nose in a book, and the world could end without me noticing. Indeed, the one place where Toni actually needed a bodyguard was in Guatemala, where she actually hired the hotel’s bodyguard who brought his shotgun.
Cemeteries and people’s interaction with them vary widely from country to country, a fact that we first noticed when we were living in a small village in México, called Tepoztlán. Our neighbors invited us to visit their family graves for Day of the Dead in another small town at the foot of the snow covered peak, called Popocatepetl. We first cleaned the graves of weeds and debris and decorated them with bright yellow flowers, whose name in Nahuatl I have forgotten, but they were similar to marigolds. Then we proceeded to have a picnic right on the graves, laughing eating, drinking beer, and having a surprisingly good time.
In Cuenca, most people are buried in mausoleums of a sort. Instead of the enclosed buildings that serve as mausoleums in the United States, most of these are large open structures that reminds one of beehives, in the sense that there are rows and rows of niches, where the coffins slide in horizontally. The structures are often five or six rows high with additional rows on the second and third floors. There can be as many as 40 or 50 of these grave slots with the front end of niche providing the occupants name, date of death, and appropriate decoration in terms of bas relief sculptures of angels, Jesus and the person’s favorite things in life. The ones of children are decorated with toys, soccer balls, bicycles, dolls, balloons, etc. In others, there is a sculpture of a motorcycle or an airplane; although in these cases it may have been the airplane or the motor cycle that what killed them.
Some of these large mausoleums are erected by trade associations. For example, one of these burial 
structures was built by the association of jewelers for its members and their families. Their niches are decorated with elaborate silver and bronze sculptures in bas relief. Other associations have similar themes and/or styles.
There are also some more traditional, free standing graves in the cemetery as well. These tend to have bronze figures of Jesus, Mary, saints and various angels. There was one Jesus that looked like he was dancing the Macarena, although I am sure that if I knew anything about Catholic iconography, it would be less humorous.
The cemetery was huge and filled with families with children, teenager couples taking a walk, and people exercising. Everyone brought flowers to decorate their family graves. There were even flowers in front of the burial niches of people who died in the 1930s. All in all, the cemetery and the people were bright and cheerful, although no one picnicked on the graves. Of course, we have to be here on the Day of the Dead to make sure.
Today is a special day. And how is this day different from all the other days? Well, it is not because we are celebrating the escape from slavery in Egypt or because it is Easter, or el Día de la Gloria, as they call it in Spanish. Passover and Easter happen each year, but this day is different in that it marks our 35th wedding anniversary. Normally, we take special trips for those anniversaries divisible by 5s; however, this is the first major anniversary that we actually took a trip during the actual day of our anniversary. I have to say, I think that this marriage is working, although why Toni puts up with me is a question that I haven’t resolved.
Tomorrow we leave Cuenca and return to Quito to catch our plane home on Tuesday. We chose an early flight that leaves at 6:40 a.m. so we could get home to Albuquerque fairly early. What we didn’t realize is that the international airport requires that you arrive 3 hours before the flight. Arghhh!
