Carnaval!

Because Carnaval, a huge national holiday that is essentially the same as Mardi Gras ("let's go crazy before we have to sacrifice stuff for Lent"), was this Monday and Tuesday, my group of volunteers travelled to Manta, a small city on the coast! There were 10 of us--our group has changed a bit since we started in January. A few of our friends from our original group couldn't come but some new volunteers have arrived since. So now we have volunteers from 7 countries: Germany (Lasse, Iris, Johanna, and Flo), USA (Olivia, me), Iceland (Eva, Oskar), New Zealand (Brendan), Sweden (Ida, Natalie), Switzerland (Mio, who's not actually with VASE or any organization at all actually--she looked up her project on the internet and went!), and Estonia (Olga).

The process of getting there with 10 people, though, was quite intense. Four hours of internet searching, myriad long-distance phone calls, and tons of frustration later, we finally ended up finding a hostel and a bus ride for 10 of us. We booked the hostel through a website that looked legit, and the bus ride was actually organized through the host family of Oskar, one of the volunteers in our group. The evening before we left (Thursday), I get a phone call from Oskar saying that the bus actually doesn't go through Manta at all; in fact, it goes the exact opposite direction. How that happened, I haven't a clue, but Oskar and his host family frantically looked for other options for the whole night and we ended up booking a private bus (a whole $25 per person--very very expensive for a bus ride).

Friday evening saw us all squashed around Oskar's host family's dinner table eating a full out meal that his family had made for us. It was quite a squeeze since Oskar's house is so tiny--he lives in Collaqui, a smaller more rural town than Tumbaco that is an hour from Quito, in a house not meant to have a 6 foot something guy living in it. The ceilings are extremely low so Oskar's going to have a permanently bent-over back by the end of his 6 months, I think.

Then we piled into our tiny, private bus and traveled 9 hours overnight to Manta. We stopped right outside of Collaqui to pick up the bus driver's family (they were going to vacation in Manta as well) so we ended up with 16 people and our piles of luggage crushed into this bus. Needless to say, no one slept much, what with the heat that just kept getting hotter as we traveled down from the mountains and the obnoxious Spanish music the bus driver was playing. At like 3am or so, we had to suffer through this playlist of the saddest and most ballad-like music ever: "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion from "Titanic," "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (oh MUUSA), etc. etc. It was awful.

We finally arrived in Manta at around 7:30/8am-ish but had the most impossible time finding our hostel. Not joking, every 20 feet or so, our driver, Roberto, would stop and ask where the street was, and every single person would reply, "Muy largos" which basically means "Very far." We were far out of Manta by this time and feeling a bit desperate. We had no idea where we were, where our hostel was, and it was pouring rain. Not ideal weather for the beach. It was looking grim.

Then, we saw this totally gorgeous beach out of our bus windows and our driver turned off the main road and headed toward this beach to a hostel right on the water. We were like, "Oh my god. This can't be our hostel," because it was stunning and RIGHT there on the sea. But actually, it wasn't our hostel. It was the hostel where we asked for directions. Sad sad.

But then! Not only did our initial bus ride turn out to be going the wrong direction, but then we found out the hostel we booked online didn't exist! It was a fake website that stole the $27 reservation fee we paid for our supposed hostel. Luckily, the splendid hostel at which we were currently had enough available rooms for us all--for $20 per person per night (again, very very expensive). We ate some breakfast there then spent the day at the beach, only a 2 minute walk from our front door. The rain had stopped, the sun was peaking shyly through the clouds, the waves were big, and the water warm. So great. And oh man, even when it's cloudy, the sun here in Ecuador is so strong. We put loads of sunscreen on and still managed a decent tan on the first day. And the coast is already loads hotter than in mountainous Quito. It was actually humid, something I haven't experienced here in Ecuador at all until now. So great, though. Until I lost my glasses in the Pacific. Whoops. I didn't realize I was wearing them and got knocked over by a huge wave and there went the glasses. So the entire weekend, I had to borrow my friend Olivia's glasses, but I still couldn't see well at all. Total bummer being blind the whole weekend but now I have my spare pair and all is well.

That night was surprisingly quiet. There was a decent amount of people hanging out on the beach during the day so we expected there to be a pretty big party on the beach that night, it being Carnaval weekend and all. But no, it totally emptied around 6pm or so. So we were all hanging out in one of our rooms at the hostel, sad that we were missing Carnaval fun, when we heard a knock at the door. It was our fantastic bus driver saying that he'd found us a way cheaper hostel in the actual city part of Manta! And for only $5 per person per night! He wanted us to actually leave right then so that we wouldn't have to pay for the night at this expensive hostel. We ended up staying at the nice hostel one night. (We felt bad--we couldn't just leave after the hostel people had helped us so much when we tried to figure out where we were staying that night.) Despite being so expensive, the hostel was really awesome--it had air conditioning, a pool, cheap foodÉ.

The next day, Sunday, was beautifully sunny and crazy hot. We spent the morning on the beach once again, then packed everything back into our bus to go to the new hostel. We were all paying our $20 per person to the hostel owner when some trouble arose. The hostel people were kinda angry with us since we had said we'd stay for all three nights and now were leaving after only one. So they wanted us to come with them to check our rooms to see if there was anything broken or whatnot. They walked straight into our bathroom and pulled the lock out of the doorknob and claimed that we broke it. We had obviously not, and the lock worked fine even though it could pop out of the doorknob. So they made us pay $40 extra for that, and even though we knew they were totally cheating us, we had to pay. After all that, we speedily drove away towards Manta.

The rest of that day was spent on yet another beach, another totally gorgeous one that some Ecuadorian friends we'd met at the expensive hostel brought us to. Having Ecuadorian friends, I'm realizing, is a really great thing because they know what's up. Like, where to find the best beaches, for example. We lazed around at the beach some more--swimming, tanning, playing cards, and messing around with this stuff that has a name sounding like "karaoke." Basically, it's this stuff that comes in a can that is a mix between silly string and foamy soap and you spray it at each other only during Carnaval weekend. The first time I'd used it was the day we left for Manta. My school had its own Carnaval celebration, complete with a junk food feast, "karaoke" fun, costumes (they don't have Halloween here--they dress up for Carnaval!), and even a parade down the street with banners saying "Long live Carnaval but without water!" (My host mom is trying to make the point that throwing water--which happens excessively during Carnaval--is a waste of water and hence, throw "karaoke" instead.) But basically, this "karaoke" stuff is awesome. We had great fun at the beach totally covering each other with the stuff then dunking each other in the water.

That evening, despite being Valentine's Day, almost all of us crashed and went to bed early. Being in the sun all day and not getting enough sleep drains the energy out of you, so I ended up getting 10 hours of sleep that night. The most sleep I've had in Ecuador so far!

On Monday, Carnaval started. We all slept in so the day began at around noon when we tried to walk down the street to get breakfast. The second we stepped out of the hostel's front door, we were bombarded by water balloons. (It was the bus driver's kids actually--they were staying at the same hostel as us.) We picked up speed, turned the corner, and were drenched with now bucketsful of water. Luckily, we'd been smart enough to wear our bathing suits but man, we got so wet. But that's Carnaval for you! People walk around in the streets carrying water guns, kids get a hold of hoses and spray passing cars, water balloons and buckets are constantly held, ready for any passersby. It's impossible to stay dry on Carnaval.

After breakfast, we had an even longer walk down to the beach. We chose to go to the one that we could see out our hostel window, one that we hadn't been to yet. Turned out, the beach was really dirty, and it was clear that gringos were rare sights there. We got some of the weirdest looks. Later we realized that our hostel was in the sorta sketchy part of town, and hence the beach was sorta sketchy as well. So we cleared out of the beach pretty quickly and went shopping for snack food at the Supermaxi (our best friend now) instead. Then, feeling hungry, we ate at the only open restaurant in the entire town, KFC.

The evening was pretty lame--we never found where the actual Carnaval party was--and we ended up, disappointed, on the roof/balcony of our hostel eating our recently purchased junk food. Not our preferred way to celebrate Carnaval but whatever. And then, after spending most of the night on the roof, we had a few hours sleep then it was back on the bus to Quito. A good time overall.