Markets and mountains in Otavalo

Here's to my first blog post from South America!
The first 10 days have gone past without any major mishaps. Well apart from me leaving behind my money belt, including a couple of credit cards, with Wayne's parents in Bendigo and only realising when we were at the airport. I really can't blame Wayne for doubting my travel credentials from day one, I mean what world traveller leaves without a money belt?! Luckily the money belt was sent off towards Quito before we boarded the plane to Santiago - Thanks Tony.

After a long flight and five hours in Santiago airport, watching people watching the World Cup, then another five hour flight, we finally touched down in Quito capital of Ecuador.
Quito sits on the Equator and at 2850 meters, so on top of jetlag we knew altitude breathlessnes would be our friends for the first couple of days. Mildly huffing and puffing we spent the first day checking out the old town of Quito. With elaborate churches, old colonial  houses and grand plazas en masse, it deservedly is on UNESCO's World Heritage list (and no sane politician would dream of trying to get it delisted).

The next day we made our way to the bus terminal, to get a bus further north. Oh what pleasure to navigate a well organised transport hub. I can't help comparing it to my experiences with public transport in Africa, but really it is not comparable. After buying tickets we jumped on a bus to Otavalo, a smallish town a couple of hours further north in the Andes.

Otavalo is famed for what is labelled South America's biggest market. I may have had some romantic vision of the market being this wonderfully disorganised event, where the indignous indians come down from the village to sell their wares to the towns people. Not so, more like rows and rows of highly organised, well set-up stalls, many of them selling more of less the same things and all very tourist orientated. Alpaca ponchos, scarves, blankets and weaved rugs being the most popular.
Much more fun was the live animal market, where all the usual farm animals were on display along with rabbits and guinea pigs. Cute hey.. not so much. In the Andes, Cuy, as guinea pigs are called, are for eating. We did have a taste of the national 'pet' on the first night in Quito, and yes it did taste a bit like chicken, a tough and chewy one at that though.

Ladies doing a deal at the animal market. 

Cuy for sale.

To be fair to the good market people of Otavalo, I should mention that the market day was a great day, You never go wrong with wandering around town and admiring the colourful traditional outfits worn by young and old. I have a soft spot for men with long hair and here I found my self surrounded by men with thick, shiny black braids. No need for Wayne to be jealous though, most of them didn't come to my shoulders. The very old men and women were in fact tiny, waist height at most. Wayne's theory is that they don't die, they just shrink until they disappear.
Our visit coincided with the end of the Inti Raymi festival, a millennia-old indigenous celebration of summer equinox. We probably missed the main parts but did enjoy to watch an afternoon of traditional dancing and a bonfire at night.

Young entrepreneur selling slush ice to kiddies of Otavalo.

We decided to stay in Otavalo and take some Spanish lessons. It's popular to take lessons in Ecuador, both because it's cheap and the Spanish spoken is relatively pure. Speaking only a few words of Spanglish and bits of very basic grammar learned from a language app, we could definately do with some proper tuition. It was easy to organise, we walked into a Spanish Institute on a Monday morning and had our first lessons with a private teacher the same afternoon.
It was a bit of a big ask, to try and teach us enough Spanish to take us through South America - in a week. She didn't waste time, our teacher Isabel, on day two we were dragged through the regular verbs and on day three the irregular verbs, combined with lots of speaking practice.

Otavalo is surrounded by mountains and we used the opportunity to work on our appallingly poor fitness level. Half an hours drive out of town lies the beautiful Laguna Cuicocha, a crater lake created by a now extinct eroded volcano. At 3100 meters we were already a bit puffed before even starting off and five minutes into the walk we were completely out of breath and we hadn't really started going up. The following four hours circut of the lake took us to 3450 meters, on the way down our legs were more than a bit wobbly. At least the many breaks we required, meant that we had time to enjoy the fantastic view and the variety of flowers and plant en route.

In between classess we also had time to visit a small town that specialises in leather goods. Again I had imagined something a bit more low key, than the 50 plus mainly boutique-style shops selling all kinds of leather jackets, bags, belt and shoes. It was a good thing that we had left our cards at home, our backpacks are more than full already.
On our last day in town, we went to a Condor Park, a foundation-run place that rehabilitates various birds of prey. They had a show where eagles and hawks were flying free. Wow, after watching these big birds soar over the Andean peaks, I can see what inspired the first aviators. Indeed it inspired me to try hang gliding, must see if

Now back in Quito for two days. Next on the agenda is El Oriente, the Ecuadorian part of the Amazon jungle. Which means that for the next little week I will have to try and tame my fear of frogs and snakes, yaiks

Signing off now, the hostel is in party gear and I feel very old.