Olivia’s Travel Tips: DO check the toilet for tarantulas. DON’T engage the crazy Ecuadorian man holding the potted plant like an infant in conversation. Crazies are crazies, no matter what country you’re in.
Today marks the week anniversary of my arrival at Arajuno (I know, that was weird phrasing, but I couldn’t think of the right way to express that). More importantly, as of Sunday morning I was officially vaccinated against Yellow Fever. For those of you who don’t know , I got my vaccination a mere 5 days before I was due to arrive in the jungle. The thing about Yellow Fever vaccinations is that they must be done 10 days before entering a dangerous area. Oops. But, it would appear that I did not, in fact, contract Yellow Fever and can now be far less paranoid about applying bug spray every 5 or 6 minutes.
Since there is no school on the weekends, we are free to do whatever we want here on Saturday and Sunday. We had been told all week that there was going to be a big festival at a sort of temporary fairgrounds that is located along the road to one of the schools we go to. It is called “diez de agosto” (tenth of August), and as far as I could tell it was their Independence Day rolled together with some celebrations for “Festival del Turismo” which means “Festival of Tourism.” We learned that they had deemed August tourism month in an effort to bring more money into the area. I was fascinated that they were doing so much to increase tourism, yet as far as I could tell, we were the only gringos at this festival. Perhaps there were some Ecuadorians from out of town…although this seems relatively unlikely.
Anyways, in the morning before the festival we caught a bus to Puyo (the bigger town), which was absolutely lovely. After using the high-speed internet and dropping off our laundry, we walked about 10 minutes out of town down to “the riverside.” There, we climbed to the top of this rather rickety observation tower. On a scale of 1-10 of steadiness, with 1 being a tower made of Lincoln Logs and 10 being the Empire State Building, I would put this tower in the 4 range of things. Safety concerns aside, the views were incredible! We could see the whole city, and behind it beautiful outlines of mountains. On the other side we had an aerial view of the jungle, which was also fantastic. Naturally, we had to embrace our inner tourist and take millions of pictures here.
After descending the tower (amidst a frightening amount of wind, I might add), we walked across a bridge (again, questionable design integrity there), to this little walk through the jungle. It followed the river, and we were surrounded the whole time by trees, flowers, and exotic looking plants. Since it was pretty hot, there were also a lot of people just playing and relaxing in the river in an effort to cool off. It was so beautiful, and it kept striking me that we hadn’t had to pay for parking or a ticket or wait in a line to get in. There was just so much beauty and no one was controlling it, it was just waiting to be seen. Once we emerged from the jungle we walked back across the bridge and up this rooftop bar to get a bit of lunch and just enjoy the bright sunshine and great views.
TORO!
Then, it was time for the festival! About 10 kilometers away then had set up a fairgrounds with all sorts of booths, trucks selling stuff, foodstands, and best of all, a bullfighting ring! Now, I was , and still am, I suppose pretty conflicted about the whole bullfighting thing. On the one hand I think it is wrong to torture an innocent animal just so that the crowds will be entertained, but on the other hand I am in Ecuador to learn about their culture, not to judge it. On Saturday, as I am sure will happen in the future, I was walking a thin line between maintaining my morals and ideals, and imposing them onto another culture.
As it was, I probably needn’t have worried about the whole animal cruelty piece of things. This bull was actually a pretty small one, and they didn’t actually hurt it at all, or kill it. It seemed that they only reason it was mad was because it had been cooped up and because someone kept waving red banners in his face. This was definitely a bullfight of the DIY variety. And, as bulls from a DIY bullring are wont to do, these bulls would regularly escape from the ring due to a problem with the door. Namely, that it did not close fully. When the bull would start to squirm its way out, everyone in the stands would basically die laughing, and people seemed remarkably relaxed about the whole thing. Then, roughly 30 men (and by men I mean males ages 4-100) would descend upon the ring and attempt to throw a string around the bulls haunches in an effort to pull it back in. Then everyone played tug of war for a bit until the bull was safely back within the gates. Until the next bull came out, and they repeated the whole routine again. My favorite part of the bullfight was watching the men react to it. The Ecuadorian men seem to generally be reserved, especially in public. But here, they were not afraid to show a little emotion. In fact, their unabashed amusement at the bulls’ antics was what made watching the fight so fun for me.
After the fight was over, we kept walking around the festival and stopped for a bit to have some drinks and chat with the kids from school and our friend Manuel. Finally, when we were all exhausted we fell into bed and awaited our utterly relaxing Sunday of lounging around the house.
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