Carnaval

I get next Monday and Tuesday off for a holiday known as Carnaval. People tell me it´s a Catholic holiday, in the sense that Mardi Gras is a Catholic holiday. Unlike Mardi Gras, which seems to revolve around a lot of drinking, here it involves dousing friends and random strangers with water and soapy foam. In fact, I have already been the victim of one very small child´s can of foam. By the way, foam in Spanish is "espuma", and for some reason, I don´t like this word much.

In Quito, it´s actually against the law to throw water balloons, so along with many other Ecuadorians, my friends and I have plans to go out of town for Carnaval. Initially, we had planned to go to a remote part of the coast called the Manglares, which features the tallest Mangrove forests in the world. But then every single road out of Quito to the coast either collapsed or suffered a mudslide. So instead, we´re going to Baños, a small town with an active volcano and thermal springs. They also have the Virgin of Pure Water there, who supposedly performs miracles to save people forom drowning and so on, so hopefully she can help me avoid the most adamant of the water-toting strangers. I´ll be out of touch for a while, but please, in the spirit of Carnaval, douse at least one friend with water for me.