!Viva el Carnaval!

Carnaval.  This translates to one of the biggest holidays down here in Ecuador.  It also translates to crazy fun like I've never seen before, and getting sprayed in the face with foam by random strangers as you walk down the street.  Yes, you read that right.  I'll explain more a little later.

For Carnaval we had 5 days off over the weekend, since we finished the first cycle of classes.  I took off with 4 other gals from the program to Baños, a little town nestled beneath one of Ecuador's most active volcanoes, Tungurahua.  Baños is surrounded by waterfalls, has hotsprings, and as many extreme sports as you could want.  (Note: this post is going to focus on Carnaval activities, there will be another one about the rest of the weekend, including said waterfalls and extreme sports.)  Every night was a party in the streets with live music, reggeton blasting from the bars and discotecas, and foam fights galore.

Center park of Baños, seen from a balcony of the church.  The waterfall on the left is right above the hotsprings.

On Sunday we headed on a day trip to Ambato, another city about an hour away from Baños, to watch the parade.

It really was a good spot to watch the action.  We could see better than a lot of people in front of us.

We ended up sitting on a dumpster since that was just about the only place left with a view of the parade, which was a spectacle of color, music, dancing, and floats made of flowers.

Flowers of flowers.  Every float had it's princess too.

These guys were some of my favorites out of the parade.  Their dancing combined with the costumes made it fun to watch.

This was another of my favorite groups, I loved the costumes.

We spent 2 hours watching the parade, and made some friends while sitting on our dumpster.  The two brothers who became our new friends showed us around the city for the remainder of the day, introduced us to some new fruits, and took us to some of the events happening in Ambato, including a presentation of traditional dances from Ecuador and surrounding countries.  It was so nice to have some local guides and not have to worry about where we were, where we were going, or if we were lost.

Here we are eating empanadas with Bolivar

Historically Carnaval included throwing water on people, now the majority of the battles happen with cans of foam (think shaving cream but 3 times as big) that have a range of about 8 feet.  I have no idea what the foam was made of, but it wasn't soap, and disappeared fairly quickly.  Some of it was colored though, and that stained if you weren't careful.

Cue segue into this photo:

The aftermath of a battle.  Esteban is on the left, he's our friend we brought with us from Baños.  The other two guys were locals that retaliated and ended up in a war.

We went Monday to Guaranda, another small town which was about 2 hours out of Ambato, and watched the parade there too.  This time it was raining.  Everyone was in love with their umbrella, which made it hard to see sometimes (and we didn't manage to find a handy dumpster to sit on) but it was still fun, and when the rain subsided we could see a bit better.  During a break in the parade, we got into a massive foam/flour/confetti/water balloon fight with ourselves and a couple other locals.  Combine that with the rain, and you have a big mess on your hands.  I'm surprised they let us on the buses back to Ambato and Baños in our unbaked-cake state.

Viva el Carnaval!

(Historically there are also eggs and oil thrown during Carnaval, luckily we escaped that.  One of our friends in Baños did come across some cousins of his though, and we watched him get eggs cracked all over his head.  After we left on the bus he was headed back to get some revenge.)

Basically, Carnaval was awesome.  It was crazy for me, as a nice American girl, to watch random strangers spray each other with foam, get sprayed myself (and not always only a little bit) and just go with it.  The small children were especially dangerous.

One of the few action shots I got, they happened quickly.  Kids as young as 3ish had cans of foam, and knew how to use them.

There was no avoiding getting sprayed, and no point in getting mad when it did happen.  It was an exercise in enjoying life and going with it, and I had a blast, even when covered in foam for the umpteenth time during the day, just when I had gotten the last bit of foam cleaned off.  I made some good friends in the 5 days we were in Baños, and continue to be astounded by the beautiful places waiting to be found down here.

Stay tuned for the next post which will have pictures of the rest of Baños, waterfalls and all!