Burn Baby, Burn - New Year's Eve in Ecuador

This year was first away form Australia for New Year’s Eve. Traveling gives me to opportunity to experience new countries and cultures, and inviting in the New Year in Ecuador didn’t disappoint.

The day after Christmas characters start to line the streets, both human and not-so-human. The tradition here each New Year’s Eve is to burn effigies filled with firecrackers, burning away the bad things of the past year and starting the new.

Every street corner and major intersection has hundreds of skillfully crafted characters made of paper-mache and individually painted for people to buy and fill with as many explosives as they can fit.

Traditionally the effigies were political figures or people who had wronged the previous year. Now however it’s a colorful combination of cartoon characters, superheroes and everything in between.

The day before New Year’s Eve we drove through a lower-class neighbourhood that is known for it’s impressive effigies. Massive creations of Shrek and Donkey, IronMan and more Minions were having their final touches done whilst people admired from the street. So much work goes into these pieces of art, and everyone is so excited to watch them burn.

There are also unique characters whom wander the streets on New Year’s Eve. Men dressed as widows beg traffic passing by to give them some change. The story goes that widows used to beg for money to burn effigies of their dead husbands and start the New Year fresh. Today men dress in drag and ask for money so that they can either buy alcohol for their celebrations or more fireworks. Either way, it was funny to watch.

So at 11:45pm after an evening at home with family, friends, dinner, drinks and dancing everyone on the private community made their way out the front to the freeway where a pile of effigies was building. Throwing an explosive filled effigy on the pile and taking the mandatory selfie before midnight was done, and once midnight struck and ‘Feliz Anos’ were said, the night lit up.

Explosive sounds filled the air, fireworks littered the sky and large effigy burning fires lined the freeway, with a new one situated every hundred metres or so.

As I watched the flames explode with whatever explosives stuffed the effigies, felt the heat as I stood in the middle of the freeway of the flames burning directly under power lines and watching hundreds of fireworks launched by those standing around me explode and color the sky, it did cross my mind how unsafe the whole thing was. But the locals loved it. Standing with their drinks, family and friends, laughing and yelling with awe at the explosions, watching the flames grow larger and inviting the new year to begin.