The Arupos are blooming.

It's a beautiful time of the year when that happens. Arupos are native to Ecuador and Perú ("Chionanthus pubescens") and they're almost everywhere in the Sierra. For some reason, they seem to respect the cycle of stations in the northern hemisphere, starting to bloom when spring begins.

"Pawkar Raymi" is the festival of the flowering, celebrated by Kichwa (and probably other tribes and nationalities) on the equinox on the 21st of March. Guess which tree starts flowering round about then? Right! Most of them! Including the Arupo. Here in the Sierra, Otavalo is most famous for it's Pawkar Raymi celebrations at the feet of Mt. Imbabura, an ex-volcano that you can see stick up below the twigs and flowers in the picture above.

The "Hatun Puncha" in the mural is not part of the Pawkar Raymi, but the Inti Raymi, the sun festival. But especially the big communities around
Cotacachi start the dances in April and May already, practicing, going from house to house to absorb the spirits of the community.

The pictures in the day are taken on the main square of Cotacachi, while the night time pictures are of an Arupo that grows in the middle strip of an Avenida leading to the main square, around 500m before getting to it.

It was a mellow evening, and I needed another walk to clear my head, so I went for a walk. My girlfriend lives right up the street from the Arupo, so I walked by there, but she hadn't come home from work yet.

I played with the flowers and the moon, and tried many perspectives. But it's not easy to take pictures in the dark with many streetlights, despite the camera and the cellphone app being incredibly good. So, many of them didn't really turn out well.

It's not the Arupo, but Mt. Imbabura as a shadow. I liked this picture, and it's from the same walk, so I thought I'd include it.

That's it for now. I hope you enjoyed the pictures!

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As always, any feedback and especially tips and tricks are very welcome! As long as it's not AI generated content or comment spamming... 😅

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Thank you for stopping by!

All pictures are taken by myself with a Motorola Edge 60 Pro and I reserve the copyright - but you're welcome to ask if you'd like to use one of the pics!