Playas!

Carnival is a national holiday in Ecuador. People "play carnival." It's a fun, free-for-all game that includes: foam, paint, flour, eggs, water, laughter, music, and dancing. A group of twelve of us decided to go to Playas, a coastal town, for our three days off. We spent the days sightseeing and relaxing on the beach. Our nights were spent at concerts by the water where we played carnival.  We were the only gringos that I saw the entire time we were there, which made the experience a lot more interesting and gave it a deeper cultural meaning. As a group, this detail made us think a lot more about where we were and the ways in which people interact.

Another interesting, and challenging, part of our adventure  was the lack of vegetarian food. In Cuenca, this has not been a major problem. In Playas, it was. I didn't eat much on Sunday due to the amount of traveling, so I was very ready for dinner. We decided to eat in the hotel for convenience. There was not a single thing on the menu that didn't have some type of meat. We asked the waitress if there were any vegetarian options, and were told not at that time of day. So... shrimp. This meal was the first in over a year to include meat/fish. I managed to figure out vegetarian food for the rest of our meals. Thankfully, I'm here with a really wonderful group of people who are willing to search for places where all of us are comfortable eating.

And, pictures!

The view from our hotel room.

The beach where we spent the days relaxing and jumping in the waves.

On Monday, seven of us decided to go to an even smaller town nearby and take a boat out to an island.

One of the best parts, was the dolphins that we saw. I have a video, but am currently unable to upload it. I will post it tomorrow.

The island in the background is home to many different birds. We saw so many on our way past it.

There were literally hundreds of birds.

We saw so many birds.

On the island we went to, there were wild donkeys.

And crabs.

And trash. It was so disappointing to see this much garbage. It was also a reminder that when we liter it ends on islands like this.

After a night of playing Carnival. Because we stood out so much we were easy targets. We armed ourselves with foam and went to the concert. By the time we got there, we had been foamed, splashed, egged, floured, and painted. Overall, people were very good natured about it. We had a ton of fun. We worked our way up to right in front of the stage and were shown  dancing on the screens on either side of the stage. There were lots of families there, and we had fun dancing with the little kids around us. There's still a little blue in my hair, but not much and I don't think anyone else would notice it.

While I was swimming on Tuesday, I noticed that the group of people beside me were holding a starfish. I thought it was so awesome that they found one. A few minutes later I felt one beneath my feet, so I picked it up. It was so cool. At first I held it on its back, and it's legs all folded inwards so it was like a ball. When I laid it flat on my hands, I could feel all of the little leg-things (look under the left-most leg in the pictures) wiggling. After the photo-shoot, I put it back in the water, roughly where I found it.