Most shops are open
Monday to Saturday from
9am to 6pm. Many occupy
the family home and,
outside the biggest
cities, open every day
for as long as someone
is up. Opening hours of
public offices are
generally from 9am to 5
or 6pm Monday to Friday,
with an hour or so for
lunch. In rural areas,
the working day often
starts earlier, say at
8am, and a longer lunch
of a couple of hours is
taken.
Banks do
business from 9am to
1.30pm, Monday to Friday,
sometimes closing at 1pm
on Saturdays. Some banks
extend business to 6pm
during the week, though
with reduced services -
usually this means you
can't change travellers'
cheques after 1.30pm.
Post offices are
open Mondays to Fridays
from 8am to 7pm, closing
at noon on Saturdays,
and telephone offices
are open daily from 8am
to 10pm; in rural
regions and smaller
towns, expect hours to
be shorter for both
services. Museums
are usually closed on
Mondays.
Festivals
Ecuador has a long
tradition of
festivals and
fiestas, dating from
well before the arrival
of the Spanish. Many of
the indigenous festivals,
celebrating, for example,
the sun, the movements
of the stars or the
harvests, became
incorporated into the
Christian tradition,
often resulting in an
interesting syncretism
of Catholic religious
imagery imposed over
older indigenous beliefs.
Most
national
holidays , however,
mark famous events in
post-conquest history
and the standard
festivals of the
Catholic church.
Carnaval is one of
the more boisterous
national festivals,
climaxing in an orgy of
water fights. No one is
safe as children fill
streets and balconies,
hurling water balloons,
squirting water pistols
and chucking buckets of
water at open bus
windows.
Local fiestas
can also be good fun,
and are reasonably
frequent, with even
small places having two
or three a year. Most
towns and villages have
a foundation day or a
saint day festival, and
then maybe another for
being the capital of the
canton (each province is
divided into several
cantons). Provincial
capitals enjoy similar
festivals. You can
expect anything at these
celebrations: music,
dance, food, drink,
parades, beauty pageants,
bullfights, tournaments
and markets. In the
remoter highland
communities, they can be
very local, almost
private, affairs, yet
they'll usually always
welcome the odd outsider
who stumbles in with a
few swigs from the
chicha bucket. They'll
be much more wary of
ogling, snap-happy
tourists, who help
themselves to food and
drink - sensitivity is
the key.
