Carnaval in Ambato

Carnaval in Ecuador is four days of complete craziness. Its equivalent in the States would be Mardi Gras, but Carnaval is celebrated by everyone and is one of the most popular holidays. We headed to Ambato, 2 hours South of Quito, with our friend Marta from Chaco and her two kids to spend the four-day weekend.

Ambato is famous for its festival of flowers and fruits and it is one of the country’s biggest attractions for Carnaval. Marta is from Ambato and most of her family still lives there, so we stayed with her brother’s family. There were about 10 others PCVs that spent Carnaval in Ambato, so we all got to experience the craziness together.

Highlights:

- The area around Ambato is the biggest farming region of the country. Along time ago the farmers from the countryside started to gather annually to thank God for their harvests and ask him to bless them in the coming year. This tradition has continued and now coincides with the wild festival of Carnaval.

- There are two major parades, one in the morning and one at night. Before the parade the cops cleared the roads by threatening to run people over with cars or motorcycles.

- The floats are all made out of local crops and flowers. They are nicely topped of with beauty queens! Some of the customs were really incredible- almost as good as Brazil.

- Playing Carnaval means dousing everyone around you with water and covering them in flower. Thankfully Ambato has outlawed this, because it didn’t seem to be too popular amongst the tourists! Now everyone “plays” with spray foam. If you are in the streets you are fair game to be sprayed. Some Polish tourists didn’t seem to understand this and decided to punch anyone that sprayed them!

- I now have a new #1 least favorite food in Ecuador: Caldo de 31 or 31 Soup. It didn’t take too long to figure out what the 31 stood for … 31 different cow organs and intestines. Gregg somehow managed to eat it all without vomiting.

- Marta has to be one of the most outgoing people I have ever met. She can’t get enough of gringos and decided to rent a small bus to take all of our friends sightseeing around Ambato. We definitely saw some sites that were not in our tourist book- meat markets, shoes markets and lots of relatives’ houses.