Having a whale of a time’

mering and assembling a blizzard of ingredients along their own precise directions. There are slabs of local white cheese cut into neat triangles, large lettuce leaves, mashed sweet potato, salted cod wrapped in pastry parcels, diced chillies and cubes of deep-fried plantain, which all act as accompaniments to the pièce de résistance: a soup made from 13 different beans (one for every disciple and Jesus). For a dish with so many ingredients, fanesca is hearty, uncomplicated fare which we quickly polish off with gusto.

Our appetites sated, we dive back into the Old Town, dodging street vendors hawking piles of salted cod and honking cars winding their way through the narrow, cobbled roads. But on the way my guide insists we make a brief stop at a market which bears the name of St Francis.

Wondering what I am letting myself in for, we begin wandering the stalls of fruit and vegetables. Ecuadorians, despite their self-evident Catholic fervour, have never quite let go of their pre-Christian beliefs either, as I discover when I am steered into a small booth in one corner of the market. Locals believe many of their indigenous herbs and flowers have restorative, and even spiritual, effects. As well as healing sickness, certain formulations are said to improve mood and even procure the love of one’s beau. An elderly woman inside the cramped booth bids me sit.

Without warning I am then slapped in the face, arms and body with a bouquet of flowers and herbs she has doused in a perfumed oil. The treatment is repeated with a bowl of petals, and then, as suddenly as it started, it is finished.

The next day is Good Friday, and it begins with a painfully early start at a secondary school run by Franciscan monks. Long queues of people snaked up and down the concrete playground, but what really catches the attention is what they are wearing: long, deep purple robes, which cover them from head to foot, belted around the waist with a knotted white rope. On their heads are tall, conical hats and masks with eye holes cut out. It is no exaggeration to say they are essentially a purple version of the infamous outfits worn by the Ku Klux Klan.

These are Quito’s famous cucuruchos: locals who process in this bizarre garb through the streets every year on Good Friday to make penance for their sins. As a man repeats endless prayers to Mary through a loudspeaker, I wander among the lines, chatting to some of those patiently waiting for the procession to begin. Many are here to ask for miracles from God – for family members to be released from prison or to heal from cancer – while others come back every year in an act of piety. Still, others come to mirror Christ’s suffering 2,000 years earlier: many are carrying whips or chains to flagellate themselves and a few have even lashed barbed wire and thorns into their skin.

Eventually, the extraordinary caravan of purple penitents winds its way out of the staging area and into the streets of Quito, which are now heaving with 200,000 tourists who have come to witness the spectacle. And what a spectacle: once the full procession has marched on to the Street of the Seven Crosses it stretches like a river of purple as far as the eye can see in both directions. The atmosphere is a strange mixture of sombre reflection and festivity. Street vendors sell kitsch purple cucurucho-themed religious tat while wandering through the crowds like we are at some kind of strange sporting event.

When the highlight of the procession finally arrives – two wheeled statues of Jesus and Mary – lines of elite Swat-style police teams are needed to hold back the surging, excited hordes who hurl bouquets of roses at the feet

Without warning I am then slapped in the face, arms and body with a bouquet of flowers

of the statues. Finally, the march winds its way out of the Old Town and up a hill towards another cathedral and the masses begin to disperse in the steady drizzle. But our Semana Santa experience has one last stop, in a small town just outside Quito called Alangasi. This otherwise unremarkable municipality is famous for its own Easter tradition of driving out the “devils” before Jesus is resurrected on Sunday. For a time supposed to be marked by mourning after Christ’s death, the mood is defiantly carnivalesque. Trucks selling street food and candy floss have taken over the small plaza outside the town’s church and nearby a local rock band thrashes through a few of its hits as the crowds build for the main event.

Finally, we file into the church for a mass which starts in total darkness. Suddenly, the “devils” burst through the door: dozens of men dressed in grotesque hairy and horned masks, clanking chains, leering and grunting at the congregation and waving long tridents festooned with flashing lights. The only other light is the flashing of smartphone cameras – which casts gargoyle like shadows of the demonic figures on the walls – and the only sound is screams from children when the devils get too close.

Finally, the good guys – people in white robes carrying candles – arrive to scare away the demons who surge back out in the square where an enormous bonfire has been built on the cobbled street. The devils, clearly having a whale of a time, leap and dance around the fire while offering wads of cash and cigarettes at us to “tempt” the faithful. Once the service comes to an end the devils run towards the fire with a shout and thrust their tridents into it, lighting fireworks precariously attached to the ends. As I back-pedal furiously to avoid a leering man waving a spinning Catherine wheel, he gets close enough for me to see he is wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Lucifer is my homie”.

Rockets and streamers erupt from across the plaza, and with that my Ecuadorian Easter extravaganza finally draws to a close.

A dazzling array of coloured robes, candles and bells is matched by the riot of gold leaf and rococo sculpting

LOURDES

There is no doubting the unfailing level of interest in this small town in the Haute-Pyrénées – of all places in France, only Paris has a greater density of hotels. Lourdes’ popularity is partly down to the beauty of its setting, in the foothills of the great Franco-Spanish mountain range, on the banks of the river Gave de Pau – but largely due to the tale that has swirled around it for over 150 years. In February 1858, a 14-year-old girl, Bernadette Soubirous, reported a visionary encounter that religious authorities would deem to have been the Virgin Mary. The figure would appear to Bernadette 18 times, discussing tenets of the Catholic faith – before instructing the young woman to dig in a certain spot. The spring water which bubbled up would soon be declared to have healing properties; a belief which endures to this day. In normal times, Lourdes can welcome up to five million pilgrims per year – not least into its sumptuous neoGothic Upper Basilica. Cosmos (0330 0588 237; cosmos.co.uk) runs a six-day “Pilgrimage to Lourdes”, from £874 a head; flights extra. It has three scheduled for 2021.

FATIMA

The essence of the story was the same in this picturesque city in central Portugal; a series of apparitions, apparently of the mother of Christ, to a child – 10-yearold shepherd girl Lucia dos Santos, plus her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto – in a rural location, this time in 1917. But the visitations had a much darker tone than those in 1858. Lucia would not reveal the first two of the “Three Secrets” divulged to her (her cousins would die in the Spanish Flu pandemic) until 1941 – when they would be outlined as, respectively, a disturbing vision of hell, and a prediction of the Second World War. Yet these incidents were enough to cement Fatima’s position as a place of pilgrimage. Its limestone Basilica of the Lady of the Rosary, completed in 1953, is a thing of pale beauty – and a far calmer matter than the final act of the visitation saga. The “Miracle of the Sun” saw a sizeable crowd gather in on October 13 1917, in response to the children’s prophecy that Mary would appear. Excited witnesses would claim to have seen the sun zig-zagging in the sky.

Leger (01709 787 463; leger. co.uk) offers a nine-day “Lisbon and Portugal’s Silver Coast” escorted tour which calls at Fatima. From £1,099 a head (including flights).

SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA

Spain’s greatest pilgrimage city owes its fame to a much older turn of miraculous events. Early medieval tradition had it that, following his death in 44AD, the body of St James was carried to Galicia, and buried at an unknown spot. Unknown, that is, until a bright star revealed it to a hermit, Pelagius, in 814. Local bishop Theodomirus of Iria regarded this as a miracle, and swiftly identified the remains as pertaining to the apostle. A church would be constructed on the site within 15 years. This first building would be eviscerated in 997 in the centuries-long battle for “Spain” with the Moorish rulers of Andalucia, but its destruction would imbue it with a sheen of Christian martyrdom, and the cathedral that replaced it in 1075 was bigger and better. This structure – still standing – is the dramatic endgame to the “Camino” pilgrimage that ebbs some 500 miles across northern Spain – generally starting out at the French border (although routes vary). Intriguingly, 2021 is “Xacobeo” – the holy year for tracing “the way” which falls in an irregular pattern of every six, five, six and 11 years (the last time was 2010).

Casas Cantabricas (01223 328 721; caminos.co.uk) sells a nine-night “Camino del Frances NC2” road trip that goes west through the Rioja region. From £800 a head ( flights extra)

CANA

There is a difference of opinion over the setting for one of Jesus’s most feted miracles – the “Wedding at Cana”, where the bible says he turned water into wine just as the night was about to run dry. Israel calls it as Kafr Kanna, a village five miles from Nazareth, and scarcely much further from the gospel fishing waters of the Sea of Galilee. But Lebanon claims it, too, as its own southerly town of Qana. Which, just 50 miles from

Christ’s home town, is not completely beyond the realm of plausibility. Close to the coastal city of Tyre and its epic Roman ruins, Qana is within reach for those keen to explore a fascinating part of the Middle East. Corinthian Travel (020 3583 6089; corinthiantravel.co.uk) serves up “Lebanon: Off The Beaten Track”, a nine-day tour that charts the country in detail. From £2,595 a head ( flights extra)

JERUSALEM

One of Judaism’s most popular festivals has its roots in a miracle that emerged from the turbulence of 164BC. This was the year that Jerusalem was recaptured by Jewish warriors (the Maccabees) from the Seleucid Empire (a Greecefacing postscript to Alexander the Great’s Macedonian Empire), which had held the city in its grip for the previous 34 years. The Second Temple (the successor to the original

temple of King Soloman, which had been destroyed four centuries earlier) was promptly cleansed for Jewish worship. Once this diligent work was done, the menorah (the ninebranched Jewish candelabrum) was lit – and its wicks purportedly burned unassisted for eight days, even though there was only enough sacred oil for one. This is the cornerstone of the eightday winter festival of Hanukkah, where one extra candle is lit every evening as a symbol of liberation. The Second Temple was itself destroyed by a subsequent empire, Rome, in 70AD, but the place where it stood, Temple Mount, remains one of Jerusalem’s holiest sites.

It can be seen as part of the eight-day “Highlights of Israel” escorted tour offered by On The Go Tours (020 7371 1113; onthegotours.com), from £1,705 a head ( flights extra)

DELHI

“Miracles” have also occurred in the recent past. Witness the fever which engulfed India – and Hindu communities across the planet – when statues of the deity Ganesha were thought to be drinking bowls of milk offered to them by the devoted. The hubbub began on September 21 1995, when a worshipper at the Shree Durga Vaishno temple in New Delhi held up a spoon to a stone idol of Hinduism’s elephant-headed god of success and wisdom – and watched in amazement as the drink vanished up its trunk. The story spread rapidly, and Ganesha statues from Nepal to Canada were found to perform the same feat.

Whether or not this was the result of nothing more than “capillary action” (the capacity for a liquid to move through narrow spaces without gravity’s help) and confirmation bias, the phenomenon was ecstatically received. Not least in India’s capital, where the streets around the temple were mired in gridlock for days – and milk sales surged by 30 per cent. Delhi is part of the 16-day “Grand Tour of India” dispensed by Cox & Kings (020 3811 2407; coxandkings.co.uk). From £3,495 a head as a private holiday, flights included

Chris Leadbeater

Overseas holidays are currently subject to restrictions. See Page 3.

i Heart and soul food: this 13-bean soup is eaten every Easter gA colourful parade in the Quito streets on Palm Sunday

i Ecuadorian churches are sumptuous affairs

i Golden light: a candle procession at Lourdes Sanctuary. i Above right: the site where it is believed that Jesus Christ performed his first miracle in the southern Lebanese village of Qana

i Santiago de Compostela Cathedral in Galicia, Spain g Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem

g Making a point: the cucuruchos form a sea of colour in the streets