So after another exhausting and disappointing summit attempt, this time of Cotacachi, Holly and I returned to Quiroga to find the whole town in fiesta mode. After hopping off our truck, we immediately went to a lady selling awesome looking pork plates, tucked in, and filled up. We walked off our pork filled bellies back to the farm and passed various signs pointing us towards some unknown happenings at the Plaza de Los Torros. We weren’t quite sure of the event, but we knew it had to be good. Back at the farm, we unloaded our stuff, set it out to dry, and took a quick nap and shower. At 3pm, we headed out to the Plaza de los Torros and were greeted with a cheap entry and people hauling in their own crates of beer. This can only be good, we thought, as we headed up to the beer stand to get our first round. Now, I suppose, I will describe the scene. In the middle of this reasonable sized area is a medium sized bull ring, probably 100 feet across with various entry/exit points. Around the ring is a raised tiered grassy ring for seating. On one side there is covered seating and speckled throughout are beer and food stands selling their wares for low prices. With entertainment being the primary goal, the booze flows freely and things start off pretty slow with some horse dancing, some rodeo clown antics, and the occasional bull “fight” which is really just amateurs dodging a pissed off bull. As Holly and I are watching this model of “fun at your own risk,” one bull, which happened to be distinguished by its single horn, was in the ring and running amok. Eventually it decided it had had enough and chased its provocateur to the roughly human sized exit. What the guy was not expecting was that the bull’s lack of complimentary horn allowed it to move freely through the exit, thus releasing a raging one horned bull upon himself and the general public. Naturally, everyone stood up like a poorly coordinated “wave” and general chaos ensued for about 5 minutes while the beast was caught. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured and the festivities resumed. The escape did seem to supercharge the air though and people seemed to really hit their stride, both drinking and fighting the bulls. Soon after the escape, a couple 5th generation locals sat beside us and we started chatting. I point out their heritage because these guys are very clearly of spanish descent as opposed to the largely Quicha indigenous group. These guys, a group of three brothers, turned out to be saddle makers in the area and became good friends that we frequently ran into at these beer induced events (Inti Raymi, Labor Day, Student’s Day, Easter). With a new group of friends, Holly and I relaxed a bit and got into the nuances of bull fighting. I was always under the impression that only male bulls were faught, but many, if not most, were female. It also turned out, in this instance at least, that the females were more aggressive. I will restate that this was absolutely “fun at your own risk,” and people were entering the ring at their leisure. As the day wore on and people got a little more loose, both bull and boracho got more “bravo,” and the fights got a little more interesting.

At one point, a kid of about 13 years and his Dad entered the ring. The kid clearly wanted to earn his marks and would frequetly separate from his dad to dance with the bull. At one point, the bull turned unexpectedly and managed to flip the kid up in the air and rough him up a bit. The dad, with cronies in tow, came in and peacefully distracted/removed the bull and checked to make sure the kid was ok. After deciding the kid was mostly ok, they paraded him around to great cheers from the crowd. They gave him the Ecuadorian flag to drape over his shoulders and marched him around the ring, all the time getting great acknowledgement from the crowd. This kid, wether or not he meant to, had just been initiated into a great brotherhood of bull fighters, and at this moment it all made a lot more sense. Just sitting there with Holly and my saddle making friends I thought of all the generations of “made men” who had been initiated in the same way and came back fight after fight, year after year to tempt fate, have a good time, and maybe next time get the better end of the bull. Before things got too weird (or I got brave enough to try my own dance with the bull called Fate) Holly and I said goodbye to our friends and headed back to the farm, totally fulfilled with our experience with maybe a little better understanding of the people around us.