This weekend was carnival-weekend all over South America, and as Millie pointed out, it is the celebration and excess preceding the 40 days of lent leading into Easter in the Christian calendar. Ty's opinion on it is that the current fleshy-take on it is a distortion of the pre-Christian indigenous celebrations of feasting on meat (carni = carne (in Spanish) = meat).
Here in Ecuador we were told that Ambato was a good place to see some of the traditional celebrations of Ecuador's take on carnival, so Jonny, Becky, Ty and me headed to Ambato for the Fiesta de la Fruta y Flores:
The main event: a stunning procession of floats decorated in flowers, fruits and bread
The other significant part of carnival here in Ecuador turns out to be spraying or soaking anyone and everyone with water or foam! We got swept up in the play and spray…until Jonny's i-phone getting nicked put a dampener on the evening :-(
Murals spotted a-wandering Ambato's oddly quiet streets the morning after carnival-chaos!
Amazing paintings we spotted in a gallery in the centre of Ambato, by local artist Héctor Oswaldo Supe.
"I walk barefoot on a rocky road
decorating the path with my hands I leave
images of thousands of colors you will see my footprint
and the reflection of my soul remains in history"
Ecuadorian artist Héctor Oswaldo Supe
On the way home: trying guinea-pig for the first time (conclusion = sticky meat, hard to eat enough of the animal to feel like it's death was justified, and seeing the carcasses rotate on the spit is not that saliva-inducing).
Thanks to Jonny, Becky and Tyron for a great carnival weekend.
:-)
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