A Very Ecuadorian Christmas (and New Years)

I hate to mention it again but if you are looking for a blog talking about my interactions the indigenous folk trying to explain Santa Claus or the birth of Jesus you might want to do a Google search on “Peace Corps Africa” or something along those lines. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not belittling my experience down here, it is just very different than what I originally thought it would be like and what others might think the stereotypical Peace Corps Christmas would be like.
First off, coming from places where we the climate is cold during the holidays made it very hard to grasp that it was actually Christmas time. To be standing in 90 degree heat looking at a family of lit up reindeer mechanically grazing in an Ecuadorian’s front yard while being offered a plate of pig skin just didn’t have the same feel as sipping egg nog by the fireplace while Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” is playing in the backround.
But many of the traditions we have in the US are similar to down here. For instance, each of the organizations I work with had a little office Christmas party complete with the usual cheap gifts, copius amounts of food and drunken co-worker.
On Christmas Eve night, my girlfriend Katie and I went with my host family to the church to celebrate the birthday of the local Padre with a big feast. Naturally they upheld the Ecuadorian custom of serving dinner at midnight and afterwards we fought off dozing off while the Padre and some friends played guitar and sang. That night I was made aware of a funny birthday tradition they have down here. In Ecuador it is customary for the birthday boy/girl to try to take a bite of the cake (just mouth, no hands) before his or her friends can push their face into the cake. At first I thought the idea was absurd and was worried the very tasty looking cake was going to be damaged. But it turned out to be pretty funny and the Padre did in fact get his face stuffed into the cake (and I was able to get a piece of cake too, thank goodness!!!).

Christmas morning Katie and I gave my host families their presents of a battery charger complete with two sets of batteries and a bag of candy, then we headed into Loja to spend the day with Katie’s old host family partaking in another turkey feast (this was turkey feast #4 for me in four days). The lunch was excellent and it felt just like home with a great meal and then retiring to playing games and joke telling(none of which we got) afterwards.
That evening a couple of the Loja volunteers all came over to Katie’s apartment for some hot cider and Christmas cookies. After a couple glasses of wine we decided to break out the hearing and vision test machine, you know the usual kind of thing twenty-somethings do on a Saturday night. Inside the kit was a red/green color blindness test that we were passing around. Our friend Jason looked at it first and said why do they just have a bunch of big dots on this page. We all thought he was joking when he said this cause there were actually numbers in these dots, numbers that Jason couldn’t see. So after getting our laughs out that Jason was discovering his inability to see reds and greens he tried his luck at the hearing test and sure enough he couldn’t hear the highest frequency out of his left year. So unfortunately Jason didn’t have the best Christmas for he learned that he was both color blind and slightly deaf in one ear.
That following morning I headed back to my site with my friend Shelley who was in town for Christmas. It was with her that I splurged and bought myself my first massage and I must say that it was well worth it. After spending two days in my site, Shelley and I caught a bus for the exact other side of Ecuador from me and headed north to our friend’s house in Attacames in the Province of Esmereldas.
Attacames I would describe as the Ocean City, Maryland of Ecuador with t-shirt and trinket shops on pretty much every corner. It is one of the larger beach towns in Ecuador and attracts a lot of vacationers from Quito. We spent two days with my friend Chris in his house on stilts which is located only about 2 blocks from the beach(tough life).
After a couple of days we headed to Mompiche for New Years. Now Mompiche is my kind of beach, super quiet where the waves aren’t so big they knock you over. 15 of us all met up in this small tourist/farming town and enjoyed the rest and relaxation of our $15 cabanas right on the beach. I won’t go into details about all of the fun had in Mompiche but lets just say we all enjoyed a much needed rest from our respective sites.
On the first I hopped on a night bus to Guayaquil to meet up with Katie and her parents and head to yet ANOTHER beach. Salinas is located on the southern coast of Ecuador and is often referred to as a “. We stayed at a beautiful resort and enjoyed the all inclusive buffet, gambling at their casino and wakeboarding out in the Salinas bay. I had a great time with Katie and her parents and it was good to go back to living the “good life” even if it was only for a couple of days. So like I mentioned earlier my Christmas wasn’t too bad with visits to three of Ecuador’s nicest beaches. Even though I was kind of bummed to be away from all of my family this Christmas, being with my new great Peace Corps friends and Katie’s family made it a great holiday season, one that I will cherish forever.