Día de los Difuntos

Unpopular opinion alert: I was a little excited to miss Halloween this year in the US. I get really stressed out trying to come up with a costume, and I inevitably come up with something very lame every year. Being abroad October 31 felt like a perk!

So you can imagine my surprise when we arrived in Quito, Ecuador, and saw multiple people in different social groups walking around wearing skeleton face paint! Did Ecuador … celebrate Halloween? Was this just a bunch of American tourists bringing the holiday with them? I was confused.

After 1 hour of sleep at night, an extremely shitty American Airlines experience at 4am, being too cold to sleep on flight 1 or 2, literally RUNNING through Miami airport on our layover - 0.7 miles, wearing my giant 60L backpack - because our first flight arrived late and we had a 48 min connection, and then sleeping only another ~3 hours on plane number 2, Ian and I were in search of caffeine. We wound up at a very cool cafe in La Mariscal, and we were offered a drink called a Colada Morada - a special for the upcoming holiday of Día de los Difuntos (day of the dead) on November 2nd! Suddenly, the skeletal face paint made sense.

The Colada Morada is typically served with guaguas de pan, a pastry in the shape of a baby doll wrapped in a blanket, decorated with colorful frosting features. Derived from pre-colonial indigenous practices and modified over time by Spanish influence, Colada morada and guaguas de pan together celebrate and canonically nourish the dead. Pretty cool stumble upon!

The Colada Morada is made from various Ecuadorian fruits, spices, and purple corn flour. It’s very thick, and we really enjoyed it!

¡Salud!