Carnival and Guayaquil

Our Spanish teacher from the jungle (Ivan) was the first person to tell us about Carnival in Ecuador. He told us the best place to celebrate it is in Guaranda however once we learned that Carnival is essentially a big water fight we weren't sure we wanted to spend it in Guaranda. The problem is that in Ecuador they only have cold water and Guaranda is cold. So the idea of getting soaked with cold water in a place that isn't warm didn't appeal to us. That is why we decided to spend part of Carnival in Montanita, at the beach.  Only problem was that Montanita didn't seem to celebrate it as authentically as we had heard.We were told that during Carnival you would get soaked by water guns, water balloons, coloured flour and foam. There would also be lots of drinking and dancing, as is always the tradition in South America.

Carnival in Montanita

Well Montanita had the drinking and dancing, the only thing different for Carnival seemed to be getting sprayed with coloured foam from a can. Every night we went out during Carnival we would get sprayed with foam and I also got hit by one water balloon but that was about it. So we kind of felt like we didn't really get to experience the real Carnival celebration.

Carnival started on Saturday and went till the Tuesday so we left Montanita Monday afternoon, to avoid the mass exodus that would be happening the following days and headed to the largest city in Ecuador,  Guayaquil. When we arrived at the bus station, it was the first time I didn't feel like I was in South America. I actually felt like I was in a North  American mall. We didn't arrive until late afternoon so we spent out first night hanging out at our hostal pool however the next day and final day of Carnival we decided to go exploring the city.

Along Malecon 2000

We took a taxi into town and were shocked to see how dead the city was. We heard everyone from the city heads to the coast on the weekends but we didn't expect the largest city in Ecuador to be so dead. Everything was closed and we really only saw tourists, we actually ran into one of the Argentina families that was at the Amazon Jungle with us. We took a stoll down  Malecon 2000, which is a 2.5 km waterfront boardwalk with some beautiful parks along the way. At the very end of the boardwalk was a cute little hillside village covered in houses painted bright colours.

 

Trevor getting soaked

Carnival in Guayaquil

The day was hot and humid and my brother and the guy we were with were both tired but I insisted that we climb up the cobblestone alley and windy stairway to explore this colourful village. It was super cute and as we started to climb up we realized that these were actually peoples homes and these people were celebrating Carnival. I started taking pictures of one group celebrating, who happy posed for pictures. Then my brother, who was really hot from the heat asked one of the kids if they would wet him. They were all it and dumped a pail of water on him and started to paint him. They also shared a glass of beer with us and we had learned that it was rude not to accept, so we had a sip.  We then said goodbye and carried on our walk up through the hillside village, to then discover that around every curve on the stairway up was another Carnival party.

As soon as they saw my brother soaked and painted, they knew we were up for celebrating Carnival and won't let us go by without getting us a little wetter, adding more paint and sharing their beer. This happened the whole way up so by the time we had reached the top I had watched by brother go from blue-red-green-brown-black as people kept adding colours. The good news was we were all cooled off from the water and because it was so hot we actually appreciated getting wet.

On top of the hilltop village

Once we reached the top and got some nice pictures from the hilltop we then had to take the same path down, with the same processes taking place all the way down. Once we reached the first group we had started celebrating Carnival with we actually stayed and hung out with them for a bit. Trevor played soccer with them while I watched with the girls.We were actually really happy we got to see Carnival in Guayaquil because it was more of the authentic experience we were hoping for and it was actually a lot of fun and refreshing when it was so hot out.