Good Friday? Not so good. Easter Sunday wasn’t great, either. The very traditional Good Friday meal in South America is a soup called fanesca, made with about a dozen beans and grains and some cod fish. To be honest, everybody eats it but hardly anybody really likes it. I thought that it tasted like a bean soup without any flavor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanesca

During my Friday morning run I happened upon a ‘Stations of the Cross’ procession that was so childish and cartoonish that it made me quite sad...

Pretty much - since Thursday -  things in town have been shut down, and families have traveled to visit family, or to the beach. Today is Easter Sunday, and – since all the bakeries are closed, and planning ahead isn’t an Ecuadorian attribute - there hasn’t been any bread in the house for 2 days, and, honestly, not a whole lot else beside rice & chicken & potatoes. At lunch today he whole extended family sat down to meager bowls of that every day concoction and, to a man [and woman], ate it with a spoon, as is the custom hereabouts. Knives & forks are seldom seen.