Carnaval

Ecuador has this thing it does.  Ecuador takes your plans and it laughs at them.  Just ask anyone who came here for a time "just to travel" and is..  oops, still here.  Ecuador will take your plans,  chew them up and spit them out, toy with them, alter them..

But sometimes, sometimes, it lets your plans happen.  And not just happen, but takes your plans and  turns them into something you couldn't have planned for if you tried.  Or even have known to hope for.  Ok, maybe I am getting ahead of myself and/or overreacting.  But my point here is, when coming to Ecuador, you have to be ready for this.  Ready to make a plan and ready for it to break, and above all, ready to embrace the change those breaks will bring because sometimes it's all you can really do.  And if there is one thing I have learned, it's that those breaks make the best moments.

Take this weekend for example.  Not just any weekend, but Carnaval weekend.

Night/Day 1:  We head to Banos and indulge in the most relaxing, restorative night of quite a while.  Even walking down the street and just breathing - that warm air (you can smell the green!! and hear the insects!!) - can give you a total mind massage.  Thermal baths at night, by the waterfall at the edge of town, followed up by food on the street.  Dinner entertainment: some questionably entertaining comedians.  Why is it that all comedians here think it is funny to dress as poorly-clad women??

Next morning:  my habitual, never disappointing, breakfast place.  Then we decide to do the bike ride.  Now, this bike ride is perhaps my favorite thing to do in Ecuador.  I have done it more times than I can count.  A few close calls with a couple passenger-buses/semi-trucks as we are riding down the highway, but those gorgeous waterfalls along the river valley make the ride more than worth it.  Finally, we decide it is time to make the trek to Riobamba.  Only to be told on the way out of town that the parade is starting.  Parade?!?!  Needless to say, we find somewhere to park the car (again!) to watch the parade.  And - I am glad I did because never have I seen a parade of oxen (at least 30?? 40??) quite like that.  Or, ever.  And all carrying chamisas, exactly what those are I don't know.  Something to do with a big culminating bonfire in a plaza somewhere...

Oxen in the Banos parade

Chimborazo on the way to Ambato

Day 2:  RioB!  We make it to Riobamba in time to wake up early Saturday morning to head to the Ambato parade of Flowers and Fruits.  Of course, our departure time of 6am becomes 7am, and our arrival time of 7am becomes 8am.  But we are still ok, because the parade doesn't start until 9am.  Or so we thought.  We arrive amongst the throngs of people and quickly learn that an hour of anticipation just isn't enough if you intend to actually watch the parade.  The hour was spent walking, searching, asking, begging people to sell us a seat so we could watch the parade.  Who knew!  Ultimately, we were desperately asking people if we could please sit on the pavement at their feet.  Bet you can guess what those answers were.  Finally, miraculously, we find a spot to wiggle into and settle in to watch the parade.  Which was well worth the 3 separate attempts made over the past 2 years to get to see this parade.  Intricate, ornate floats entirely adorned in organic designs of flowers, carrots, aji peppers, wheat grains, beans, leaves - you name it if it comes from the ground I am sure it made it into at least one float.  Not to mention the gazillion "Queens of Ambato" waving their way down the street in style. And the energetic dance troops, moving to everything from Elvis Pressley to their own accompanying Andean flutes.

One of the floats covered in flowers and fruits in the Ambato parade

Ok, these people won our business.  Notice the lengths they went to to sell the recently illegalized "espuma" foam spray.  Disguised it as a baby!  When they saw cops coming, they pulled the cover down and laid down the blanket.  Clearly, our foam spray came from them this year.

So, silly me, left the house that morning thinking the parade was our primary, rather the only, event on the day's agenda.  Two hours later, riding in a car, stuck in traffic for an overturned truck, finally pushed me to ask - where are we going?  (Ambato is only an hour away)  So,where were we going?  A mass.  Or, to be more exact, a cookout following a mass.  What I expected to be a somber event, where we eat some food and give our sympathies was actually a full-blown annual-family-tradition carnaval party.  More food than I could eat in a day, an all-out men versus women karaoke contest (yes, the gringa has a certain advantage here... NOT), the elder "patriachs" of the family eventually staggering back in from their whiskey session clinging for all life to the stable and sober support of their wives/children/5-year old grandsons.  And then there was that time that I get summoned innocently into the kitchen and out to the yard only to be unapologetically ambushed with bucket upon bucket of freezing cold water.  In the clothes I had on.  And the only clothes I brought.  Because, like I said, I didn't know it was happening.  But, such is Carnaval.  Don't expect to stay dry.  Or clean.  And play back, always.

We made aji, using this over 80 year old grinding stone passed down from grandmother to mother.

Day 3 takes us to the craziest "salvaje" parade in the small town of Guano.  Dancing, spinning, and singing their way through the quaint city street is a local parade.  Festive costumes, done in shiny gold and ornate decals, fancy hair, impressive choreography.  But wait - they are covered, covered, in flour, eggs, shoe paint - shoe paint!-, foam spray, and of course soaked to the core in water.  In fact, it is even hard to watch the parade because you are in a constant mode of self-defense.  One hand trigger-ready on your own bottle of foam spray and both foot ready to jump away from the man entertaining himself by playing aim-the-water-bucket-at-the-gringa-in-the-crowd (a.k.a. me).  I got soaked.  Sorry neighbors. Walking back to the car later, put me in the direct warpath of a person, who remains unknown and unseen, who sent a solid spray of foam exactly in the hole created between my sunglasses lens and my eyeball.  Skill.  Blurry vision for hours and a red eye for days.

The water fights as witnessed on the way to Guano.  Notice the family all wearing clear garbage bags.  Prepared!

People playing with water along the streets

Guano parade

On Day 4 we thought it would be a nice day to walk the dogs and explore Riobamba a bit, having ventured out of it for each day for these Carnaval events.  One block after leaving the house we are seeing things that put us on high alert.  We return home to load up on our ammo - our foam spray.  Never walk the streets of a town during Carnaval unarmed.  I thought we were doing a great job, cunningly darting into tiendas and dodging down alleyways when we saw those trucks coming at us full of poncho-wearing people sporting buckets, trashcans full of water in tow.  We got real good at hugging walls of buildings, keeping the dogs leashes short so they couldn't give away our whereabouts to this masses of more water-bucket-bearing people scanning the streets from the rooftops.  We even had a few successful retaliations with the foam spray when people threw water balloons at us, or squirted us with their powerful homemade PVC pipe water guns.  So, I was feeling pretty good about ourselves.  Until we rounded the corner to the house and were aggressively attacked with loads of water-bearing cousins and neighbors, all keen on soaking the gringa.  What happened next?   We ate some soup and got our water buckets ready.  And that is about how it goes.

 

Just watch the series of events in this water battle!