The messiest week in South America

When I hear 'carnaval', instantly parade images of Rio de Janeiro come to mind, but this holiday, leading up to Lent, is celebrated all over South America. As Carnaval was aproaching friends warned us about being in public during the 4 day holiday weekend celebration (Saturday thru Tuesday), as anyone is fair game. Attending a parade, or merely being out in public during those four days, could end with you covered in water, raw eggs, paint, flour based paint, anything really. You do NOT want to wear your favorite clothing and you do want to protect your camera and any electronics!

A couple days later we ended up right smack in the middle of it when we went for lunch at El Jardin in Puyo. We had to walk thru a popular square where a number of people were standing along the street selling cans of colored spray foam, water balloons, and such. As we walked across the bridge, I was taking a photo of the mayhem when a young man reached over and put his paint-covered hand across my face. (You can see him walking towards us in this photo.) It was a shock, but also pretty funny. On the way back to the truck, we were sprayed with water, and witnessed a group tossing buckets of water from the bed of a truck, all in the name of good fun.

Our neighbor's hosted a Carnaval party for their church youth group and invited Asher and Journey to participate. It was a messy, fun party with water balloon fights, buckets of water, raw eggs and a relay race across a soapy tarp.

Another day (remember this is a FOUR day event) our neighbors decided to have us try a few fun challenges. Here the guys were competing against the ladies by passing a handful of flour over their heads from the front to the back of the line. I don't remember who won, but it was fun to watch.

We used black paint flour to mark our faces and arms or smear on each other. We took turns sliding across the soap-covered tarp, then had a water balloon fight that evolved into dumping full buckets on each other. Great memories were made with our new friends, our vecinos!