El año viejo
When I arrived in Pasto, it was a rainy New Year’s eve. The streets were deserted, except for a few people setting off firecrackers in effigies of the old year–straw-filled figures, dressed like old men. And of course, there were also the corpses of the mascotas that had already been burnt. According to Wikipedia, this practice has been illegal since 2005.
I had just suffered through what was, for me, a terrible bus ride–nine and half hours, the last four in the rain and dark, the bus lurching through the mountains. There are more details, but I won’t go into them. In any case, after taking this picture, I decided not to stay out in the streets for medianoche. I went back to my hotel room (I had been upgraded to a luxury suite, which should have been an indication that there was something seriously wrong with the timing of three-day visit to Pasto) and I listened to firecrackers from there.