carnival festivities

Day Four

-We saw cave/tunnel like things and big turtles in the wild
-We went to a gorgeous beach along with every other person in the Galapagos for Carnival, which is a holiday
-We played in the ocean and sprayed each other with foam for Carnival
-We spent the evening with our adopted Guayaquil families in the town for Carnival, taking lots and lots of pictures and generally enjoying the atmosphere


Breakfast today was fruit, two small rolls, and a ball of green banana. I liked the banana since my host family eats them all the time. Thus, I had the majority of four green bananas haha.
We took the bus to see Los Tuneles (The Tunnels). According to my guide book, "these underground tunnels were formed by the solidifying of the outside layer of a molten-lava flow. When the lava flow ceased, the molten lava inside the flow kept going, emptying out of the solidified skin and thus leaving tunnels" (thank you Lonely Planet). I'm sort of done seeing caves and tunnels, but they were mildly interesting. We then continued on a path and saw four huge turtles in the wild. Tony, our guide, said that they eat the vegetation and cactus (apparently they have hard mouths) because cacti have lots of water in them. At one point I stopped in the grass to photograph the turtles and my left ankle got attacked my tiny ants. Apparently bug spray isn't effective for them. They kept biting me but didn't leave any lasting bites. I only got three bug bits over all, on the back of my right ankle, so I guess I missed that spot one day. Not bad overall, though I would have preferred a few more bites over all the beetles that inhabited our hotel. They didn't hurt you at all, but they were gross. Natalee killed ten the last night we were there haha.
Anyway, we ended our trek at the ranch of this guy who sounded like an American, but he said he was born on the Islands after his parents came there from the US and had never been to the states. He gave us free coffee but charged us a dollar for a package of crackers. You may have noticed we bought a lot of crackers here. Ritz > hotel food.
We went back to the hotel for lunch and then walked to the entrance to Tortuga Bay beach. They actually searched our bags and they we walked probably 45 minutes down a brick path to get to a gorgeous beach. There was actually some blue sky, which was wonderful. The beach was packed since Monday and Tuesday were Carnival (the spanish equivalent to Mardi Gras, more or less). Basically the whole world goes to the beach and sprays each other with foam or silly string.
The beach had two sides; the side on the open ocean, with pretty big waves, and the side in a bay with zero waves. We all went to the calm side and played in the water for a while. A little 5 year old girl kept swimming around us because she didn't seem to have any other kids to play with. Linda said that she was the daughter of a famous actress, who was sitting on the beach right next to our stuff. I guess we did pick a rather exotic location to spend the holiday. Later, we went to the other side of the beach with the kids and we saw some man who they said was the ex-boyfriend of the actress. We had a ton of fun playing in the ocean and covering each other with foam. After a while we walked over to the huge crowd of people in front of a stage, where the "Mr. Tortuga Bay" contest was happening. There were three finalists, one of which was from our hotel, so we cheered for him, but he got second. The first place winner got $100 dollars. They they had the "Miss Tortuga Bay" contest. Shaunte and I are both tall and white. They called us up. We did not go. Natalee eventually got pushed up on stage by our adopted brother Tito, and she won which was super exciting. Our adopted parents had been fetched by one of the kids, so they came and helped us cheer and brought the cameras. Every person on the beach wanted a photograph with her, which was entertaining. Overall this was definitely one of the best days I've had so far in Ecuador.

We eventually made it back to the hotel, because it seemed like every person on the beach decided to leave at the same time we did, so we all had to squeeze on the narrow path. We were hot from the long walk so we went swimming in the pool with our family. It was fun to get to be with a family, since on all the other trips we've taken in Ecuador, it's been a bunch of college students. That, of course, is also lots of fun.
After dinner everyone in the hotel came out to the patio, had free baby cocktails, and danced. I danced with my 11 year old brother until his dad brought over a stool and told he pretty much had to stand on it to spin me around haha. Then we decided to go out and get ice cream, so we all walked down the street, got delicious ice cream, and continued down to the town center/wharf, which was absolutely packed with people since it was Carnival. Linda's husband has an incredibly nice camera and he uses it all the time, which is awesome because I got most of his pictures, and they're all excellent. We probably took about 200 pictures (it felt like prom, but twenty times worse haha). Our family, by this time, included us four, our two Guayaquil families, a really sweet couple from Ambato, and the runner-up Mr. Tortuga Bay and his wife, and other random people that would join us and leave. We attracted a lot of attention, but it was lots of fun. We saw the two people that were hosting the Tortuga Bay contest again; apparently she's a model and he's a dancer. We saw someone else famous too. That was fun. We also saw more seals, which I personally found more exciting. We eventually went over to the stage and watched some singers perform. They started at about 11 pm. This was not an early night. Natalee had to sit in from wearing her sash with a variety of other people wearing sashes, but Shaunte Ali and I were bored so we wandered around some and were generally successfully at avoided drunk creepers and sprays of water (that's another thing people do for carnival; they dump/spay water on you randomly all the time).
Basically we had a great day with our families, wildlife and Carnival :)