Would you believe that Santa found my GPS location? I tried to outsmart him and went from the coast to the cloud forest and then to Quito – all in one week! Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus! His elves gathered an amazing assortment of special items including new acrylic paints, REAL drawing pencils, an earthquake-relief T-shirt, chocolates — it’s a miracle,as I am still baffled to how all of those items – and more – fit in one surprise stocking!…
Thanks, Papa Noel y Elves! (— or do duendes help Papa Noel in South America?)
Merry Christmas to All!
Z
Zeebra Designs & Destinations 
Thank you for your continued blessings to me, and to all whom receive your posts. Please have a very Merry Christmas.
Such a joyful surge of colour. Christmas hugs, Lisa 🙂
Beautiful Lisa !!!!! On Dec 25, 2016 12:05 PM, “Zeebra Designs & Destinations” wrote:
> Playamart – Zeebra Designs posted: ” Would you believe that Santa found my > GPS location? I tried to outsmart him and went from the coast to the cloud > forest and then to Quito – all in one week! Yes, Virginia, there is a > Santa Claus! His elves gathered an amazing assortment of special ” >
It’s easy to see why you love it there! Happy New Year!
Merry merry Christmas Lisa!
Merry Christmas every day!!! Hugs Amiga
What a beautiful celebration! You cannot outsmart Santa! Thank you for sharing the joy, compassion and hope of this festive season. Many hugs coming your way.!!
Love them! A perfect choice for Christmas. And Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and positive 2017 to you. 🙂
Haha. That is definitely a duende! Love the vibrance! Belated Merry Christmas, but not too late for wishes of a peaceful New Year.
Tonight on one of the PBS channels we watched “Ecuador: the Royal Tour,” in which the tour guide was the president of the country:
http://www.klru.org/schedule/episode/275759/
The Spanish word duende has an interesting origin: duen de [casa], which is to say ‘dueño de [la casa]’.
Glad you had a good time.
How in the world did ‘dueno de la casa’ morph into a short squatty person that lives near swamps or streams, might have feet turned ‘backwards’ so people track them in the wrong direction, etc etc? Thanks for the Spanish lesson!
The PBS show sounds like it was very interesting. Correa has a lot of charisma, and he most-likely made a great tour guide!
I imagine originally the idea was of a household spirit. Compare the various household spirits among the ancient Romans:
http://www.ancient.eu/article/34/
And the Romans did colonize Spain, which is why Spanish is a Romance language.
I wonder whether the PBS show is available in Ecuador. If so, you could watch it.
Yes, indeed — the colors are beautiful, but I especially like what I take to be a little duende. I found a couple of articles that mentioned their similarity to Scandinavian trolls, which tickled me, since my grandmother enjoyed telling tales of the trolls. I was delighted to see the duendes have their own museum in Oaxaca. They have a duende’s shoe there, in a glass case!
Haha.. You can never outsmart Santa… Lovely Christmas Colours.. 🙂 Enjoy your new Year Lisa.. xx