You need to travel to Latin America as to fully experience the Carnival holiday. It´s such a unique and bewildering event, containing massive celebrations before Lent (a time of holiness and moderation).

You´ll notice in the days leading up to Carnival weekend that many people are walking around the city, soaking wet, and returning the cold, wet favor to random passersby. You´ll also become much more familiar with this evil substance known as “carioca” (which is pretty much just aromatic foam). Surprise carioca assaults from little kids are common and never expected. Colored flour also shoots around everywhere during the holiday, and several festivals are worth visiting.

While in Cuenca, I visited a Carnival festival at Parque Calderon with my CEDEI group, and we were immediately overwhelmed by the number of people and size of celebration. Carioca was EVERYWHERE. As seen in the picture below, we all had a ton of fun, but we had some painful experiences waking up the next morning with carioca still soaking in our eyes (seriously everyone…wear goggles or something to this; it took about 3 days for our eyes to fully recover from the awful sting and blur of carioca).

The atmosphere of Cuenca during Carnival was exceptionally friendly (it´s friendly 99.9% of the time, anyways) with the danger of getting soaked by mischievous kids around every corner.

For the second half of Carnival, I traveled to a smaller, coastal city with my friends to witness the scale of celebration on one of Ecuador´s most renowned beaches. Comparing Carnival in Cuenca and the coast was like looking at two sides of a coin. Sure, it’s the same color and holiday, but GOODNESS the coast was just a 72-hour party. On the other side, Cuenca was more of a lax, family-friendly environment.

On the coast, we all got to taste the delicious, locally caught seafood and freshly grown fruits. I loved every meal, but the fruit was out of this world. I´ll miss it the most; I know it! We participated in a surfing class (which was incredible, since several parts of the coast first became famous across Latin America for their excellent surfing conditions). Those waves were often twice my height (4 meters tall!) and could drag you under the Pacific seawater quicker than you´d realize.

During the constant celebrations of Carnival, I came to appreciate the pop culture of Ecuador (but really, Latin America in general) much more. It has such a distinct personality and exudes defiance against many modern cultural norms (and its historical oppressors). It´s a blast to dance to Reggaeton with friends, but taking in the music is one step closer to familiarizing oneself with the exciting culture of Latin America.

Though it was a round trip from Cuenca to the coast of over 14 hours, the bus rides were quite memorable. I was able to practice my Spanish and interact with people from all over Ecuador. The terrain was gorgeous as well, and I especially enjoyed riding through the Andean highlands. It was kind of like the desert mixed with an alpine forest. I remember it vividly, because in all my travels I had never seen anything even remotely similar.

I wholeheartedly recommend visiting Ecuador during the first days of February for Carnival. You won´t regret it, and it´ll leave you with several beautiful memories!