Valentine's Day - Ecuadorian style

At 2am María (who we live with), her son, daughter, in-laws, and grandchildren were woken up by a group of young men singing love songs to Steph and I outside the front gate.  Alas, we sleep in the back of the house and were the only ones who didn't wake up!  They weren't too heart-broken - apparently they sang outside many houses that night...

After church we went to visit a gorgeous waterfall and go swimming in the Pastaza gorge.  It's carnival season, so any outing naturally involves getting covered in eggs, water, foam and flour by friends, enemies and total strangers.  We also found a beach where we all got very covered in black sand - so a fairly messy day.

On the way back we got a dramatic view of the volcano Tungarahua with plumes of smoke coming out of the top.

The evening involved further hilarity on a Valentine's Day theme, with pink heart biscuits and bilingual 'honey I love you' games - it's much harder not to laugh when you're requested in very bad English to smile by the guy who's been putting eggs in your hair all weekend.