Feliz Cumpleanos Charapoto

I have told you that our festival circuit starts in June, well Charapoto actually has two fiestas, and I hadn't really realized it. Charapoto has its birthday party in late September, but then has their other festival in October, now I've got it straight. Charapoto turned 482 years old this year!  It starts with the cleaning, painting and decorating the streets...

I noticed these plastic flowers last year, and is why I made my own at Christmas. Charapoto's colors are green and gold (for the crops they grow) but when these plastic flowers were tweaked a bit and painted red, they made wonderful poinsettias. Anyway, the streets were decorated and the parade was on Wednesday afternoon. (You've seen one parade, you've seen them all, so we didn't go, even tho Nexar had said he would take us. Pictures are from Facebook.)

The white, and green with red stars is the Manabi flag. (Our "province")

I especially liked this group of Special Needs people, check out the guy in the Superman themed wheelchair "float", LOVE IT! 

Such a prideful people (and not in a bad way), they are so eager to show off the wonderful-ness of their area. And rightfully so, this area of Ecuador, is especially bountiful, but really ALL OF ECUADOR IS HEAVEN! If you haven't been here, you should! People from foreign lands, as well as the "natives" didn't just settle here over 482 years ago because it sucked!

So many things to do, and not enough to time, Mike is out of clay so we need to make a trek down to the Boca. We need to collect some wood too, maybe we will ask Nexar to drive down and help after he's sold out his bread, he often drives down before heading home. So, on that note...stay tuned, the adventure continues!