More Queen of Ambato Candidates from Pregón Parade

Here are some more Queen of Ambato candidates from the 2009 Pregón Parade. I had a tough time exposing the pictures, because there was a lot of sun and a lot of black and white in the scenes. A couple of the pictures are also kind of blurry. I was playing around with a manual focus lens and missed focus a couple of times. Sorry about that. At least I got the details of white dress in the picture above.

The driver of this candidate was on the cellphone for the whole time I saw him.

This driver never looked an inch to the right or the left, or changed his posture behind the wheel. Everybody accompanying all of the candidates was very serious.

This candidate was carrying a sort of golden mask.

This is the same candidate whose picture I posted a couple of days ago. All of the candidates were accompanied by a small cadre of well-dressed men, that looked like secret service.

Carrying a Camera in Ecuador

This last section is sort of a rant. You don't have to read it if you don't want!

Notice the man taking a picture of the candidate in the foreground of this last picture. He doesn't seem to be too worried that somebody will take his camera. There's a reason for that. Probably nobody will. Guys like him were circulating everywhere around this parade, and through the crowd were Flor and I were, taking pictures of the parade for local media. Some of them carried very expensive cameras, Nikon DSLRs and the like.

I mention this because I've read some comments on Ecuador travel forums along the lines of, "Just lose the camera while you're in Ecuador. Keep your money in your underwear. Hold your backpack in front of you with two hands everywhere you go in public," and so on. Without wishing to invalidate anyone else's experience who might have been a victim of crime, I find that kind of advice unnecessary and a little disrespectful towards the Ecuadorian people.

Like anywhere else, (New York City, for example) you might not want to carry an expensive camera in a neighborhood known for theft, but like anywhere else, you will quickly discover where those neighborhoods are and avoid them. In most situations, public events like this for example, you are fine carrying a camera and taking pictures. It's not like there are people following you everywhere with their eyes from the shadows, waiting for you to take out your camera so they can snatch it from your hands and dash off. Just use a little good old ordinary common sense (the least common kind of sense, as my wife likes to say) and in most situations you'll be fine.

With that said, you don't want to be overly confident everywhere you go in Ecuador, but I covered that under my common sense statement above. Most people in Ecuador feel the same way that you do about theft. They don't like it, they do what they can to prevent it, and they are embarrassed if it happens in their community. And when people are caught, they are punished, sometimes more severely than they are punished here.

Maybe people have had different experiences in Ecuador and will disagree with me about the risk of carrying a camera. And I'm sure they are right. Their experience is surely different than mine. We are all like the blind men touching the elephant. I only have my own experience to share.

Along those lines, my house here in Melbourne, Florida was broken in to a couple of months ago, and the thieves stole an expensive underwater camera case that I had modified. I was upset, for sure (especially at first, but there's no point in staying upset at stuff like that for too long), but on the other hand, I didn't start to think that my whole neighborhood and all of Melbourne was a den of thieves. It was just an unfortunate incident that could have happened anywhere.

I'll have even more pictures of the Pregón Parade tomorrow. Can you believe this is not even the "good" parade? I'll get to that one eventually. Stay tuned.