By midnight on New Year's Eve in Zaruma, it was just too dangerous to be on the street what with all the staggering drunken men, the liquor bottles being smashed on the boardwalk and the trucks racing through the streets. I plopped my feet up on my balcony railing and watched the show.
A half dozen pick-up trucks filled with drunken revelers raced back and forth, up and down the main street, cheering and screaming as they chucked things on to the road, clinging to the sides of the truck. A few almost fell off and as the night wore on the trucks grew more crowded with men clinging to the roof and windscreens.
Men staggered up and down the wooden boardwalk openly guzzling liquor and urinating on to the road. They dumped their booze into plastic cups and smashed the empty bottles on the street. So many smashed bottles that I thought it was part of the annual ritual. Out of nowhere, an old woman appeared and stepped into the street and put a small bag down. She almost got run over as she stood there clapping her hands and doing some strange little dance. When she finished her weird performance she picked up her bag and moved down the street half a block and did the same thing all over again.
At the other end of the street, somebody had lit a pile of garbage and a fireball quickly shot up to a second floor window. I ran into my room and gathered up my money, passport and flashlight and stuffed them into my purse and prepared for evacuation, just in case. But when I flew out to the balcony again to check the fire, the flames had been doused and the garbage was sizzling and smoking on the pavement. It was 1:30 in the morning and the party showed no sign of let-up.
A drunk tottered down the street trying to stay upright, but he tripped and fell backwards, his arms flapping at his side as he tried to grasp a telephone post. He was half on the boardwalk and half on the street and as he lay there semi-conscious, trucks screamed by, narrowly miss his head. Nobody realized he was there. Another crowd was staggering up the street so I was relieved thinking that they'd rescue him, but they just shuffled up the street beside him and left him there. Two boys then approached him and poked at him with a stick like they would a dead fish before they ran off laughing. It seemed that nobody was interested to see if he was even dead or alive, until finally two men stopped and stooped over him. They called a name, slapped his face, yelled at him some more, then pulled on his arms and helped him up. They struggled under his weight but finally, with his arms wrapped around their necks and their arms wrapped around his waist, they staggered off. I noticed more smoke coming from the other end of town but I said the hell with it and went to bed. I fell asleep before the revelry was all over, but when I looked at the street the next morning it looked like a building had collapsed. It was going to be one hell of a clean-up. Those few that weren't hungover were out there sweeping up glass and garbage and paper cups and empty whiskey bottles and hosing down storefronts and sidewalks. Some men had already started drinking again. I told the proprietor of my hotel about the man laying on the street and asked if anybody had been killed in town amongst all the fires, bottle-throwing, and drunken driving. He said that nobody had been reported missing or dead, unlike the previous year, so it had been a great success.
