My introduction to carnaval and Riobamba

So this blog is about two weeks late, and i am only to going to write the first part now, but hey life is busy here in Tena man....wait that is a complete lie...im just lazy

Anyways, I had a week off for carnaval, and with it went on an awesome trip through the southern sierra(mountains) and southern coast. Started the trip in Quito on a Friday. From Quito I took a 4 hour bus south to riobamba. Amazing how much nicer the journey is when the road is paved the whole way and and you are going through the mountains not across the mountains. All of which is contrary to my usual bus route between Quito and tena. I got into to riobamba pretty late because the terminal in Quito was an absolute zoo due to carnaval travelers. I have never seen that place so crowded. At any rate, we had to wait for the bus for about an hour. Met up with Heidi(another volunteer at the hospital) in our hostel. She was coming from tena and we arrived at pretty much the same time. Really nice hostel and very close to the train station, the train being our primary reason for being in Riobamba.
Our original plan was this; get to riobamba on Friday to wake up early on Saturday to get train tickets for Sunday morning. The train would then take us to alausí and the famous piece of track called "la nariz del diablo". The attraction of this is that you get to ride on top of the train, see some beautiful views of the mountainside, and get scarred shitless by the steep decline and incline of the so-called "devils nose". So, we woke up early got breakfast and went to the station, which was still closed despite it being 930 with a supposed 9am open time. Instead of waiting there for it to open we decided to walk around and see a bit of the city in the daylight. Went to several plazas, a marketplace, and a few Churches. Throughout our walk we saw people setting up stands to sell foam spraying cans, colored powder, water balloons, and eggs all in preparation for their carnaval celebration. I was optimistic they wouldn't throw water at us because we were gringas. I don't know why i reasoned this. It was very foolish on my part. It did not take long before we were sprayed with foam, and then some more foam, and then some more. Soon we realized; one, we wanted to see the parade, second, we would have to by foam and fight back in order to due so. It was a lot of fun. We walked down the streets spraying everyone that sprayed us, and running from those attacking with paint. The whole city was one giant shaving cream/paint/water fight in which no one was spared. Grandmas, babies, people in nice clothes, people in cars or on motorcycles all got soaked. Heidi and i went through three cans of foam each. While very good at retaliation we were not successful at avoiding the paint. About two hours later we arrived at the hotel,and, to the amusement of other guest, soaking went and covered in various colors of paint. Washed up best we could, but it ended up taking three or four days to get the purple paint out of my eyebrows. Once clean and dry we had no desire to venture out again. We ordered in pizza to the hostel and split it with some other guess that also did not want to leave. after lunch we rejoined the festivities from a safer spot, the roof of the hostel. From the roof i threw water at passersby with no danger of getting wet myself. Almost every balcony or rooftop had someone throwing water. This continued the whole day. At one point it died down and Heidi and i dared to go to a look out point a few blocks away. Just as we were getting back we were hammered with water balloons throw from a car window. Later that night when we went to dinner we took a taxi there and back directly from hostel to restaurant door. We were traveling with very little clothing and its cold in the mountains. Therefore, we wanted to make sure that what dry clothes we had left remained that way.
It was a great first day to a trip i can say that much. It also made us aware that we should leave the house in raincoats until the festivities passed. which meant we had to be scared of water balloons for the next four days (with good reason, they can hurt).

.....and the stupid thing wont let me upload pictures. the internet in tena as a whole is going through and tough time right now.
...... more pictures to come soon