Christmas without marketing

Ready to eat Christmas BBQ 

Christmas Sunset

Chef Home-boy-yar-dee

I'm falling behind on blogs but here goes more on life in Ecuador.  Christmas was something that almost came and went unnoticed.  Its not that they don't celebrate Christmas but being that everyday was a sweltering heat and a 'normal' day down here with no TV and no sales pitches and no kids asking for xbox or iPads it just seemed like another day at the beach in Ecuador.  The ONLY difference was when I went to the tienda (little store) in town they had one string of Christmas lights and it repeated the same tune over and over again all day and night.  I asked the family if the tune was driving them crazy and they said "huh?" as if they didn't even notice it.  The tienda is also their house.  Come Christmas eve and down the road in our town a crew of guys starting building a stage and some tarps covering from one side of the dirt road to the other.   I noticed when I was on my bike looking for some fruits to buy and asked them what was going on and they said it was the town fiesta and I should come by.  So later on Christmas eve night I grabbed some friends and we walked down to see what was going on.  There was a Dj there who was playing music and trying to talk everyone into dancing.  We got there around 10pm and it was like a typical dance where everyone was sitting around looking at each other and nobody dancing.  Guys drinking beers and girls all dressed up.  The families in their entirety where there and everyone looked their best.  Us gringos stood out like sore thumbs and we immediately got called out by the Dj or  deeyay as they pronounce it.  Sure enough as it got closer to Midnight people started dancing.  We joined in and got greeted with stares and smiles and danced for as long as we could until we tired.  Apparently the locals stayed all night because when I woke up early Christmas morning I could here the music still playing.  Christmas day for us wasn't much of a gift exchange other than me riding around the area and collecting flowers for Verity and her giving me some chocolates.  Pretty basic and I wondered if I was back home if I would still have a girlfriend after not buying anything.  Luckily she nor I really thought much about gifts because there isn't much to buy where we are.  We threw a bbq on Christmas day and I made an Ecuadorian version of moms Magic Cookie bar and we had a big group of travelers and friends come by to eat some food.  It wasn't a classic meal but burgers and fish on the grill and some potluck items all seemed to taste real good to us. I think Christmas was so unlike christmas that it made it easier to be away from home than say if I was just in California.  It sure was nice not to be blasted by marketing every day all day leading up to Christmas.

A week later and we had New Years come up quickly and there seemed to be more going on in prep for NYE.  Here in Ecuador they have these paper-mache' dolls or characters all over the place that people are making and buying.  Everyone got these funny things which were all parts of characters of movies from the year or anything really and they told me that at midnight they would burn them as a symbol of a year ending and the starting of a new year.  We decided to go to a nearby popular tourist town called Montañita for the day and saw lots of guys dressed as women and boys dressed as old ladies.  I asked what was up with this and they said that guys dress like widows and go asking for money to all the other locals.  I couldn't quite understand why, but its a tradition here

In Ayampe, our small little town, there was a party on the beach with music, dancing, bon fire and fireworks.  The fireworks they had were professional fireworks that we only see being lit off by city fireworks and here it was kids and drunk dudes lighting them dangerously close to the crowds.  I wished I had bought my own when I saw how giant these fireworks were.  We danced in the rain on the beach with all the locals and watched people nearly get injured with the fireworks until we faded and slipped away after midnight to sleep.  The party went on all night and through the next day.  In town there were local men stumbling around still drinking beer or caña (moonshine).

I think I'm fighting the avengers with my ice cream