Todo de Otavalo

Let´s give this another shot...

I´m going to be sprinkling in photos throughout, because there are soo many!

So two girls in the program, Chisara and Kristina, were supposed to be planning our trip to Otavalo this weekend. We weren´t all on the same page on when we were going, who we were going with and where we´d be staying until around 11:30PM Friday night. It´s a two hour ride to Otavalo from Otavalo, it turned out to be a 3hr BUS ride from Quito to Otavlo, which wasn´t amazing but they did show some cheasy American movie about a Chimp who is a spy dubbed over in Spanish on the way there as consolation.

We decided to meet at this address somewhere in Quito where there was a terminal for us to take a bus to Otavalo. Alison and I live next to each other so Alison walked to my place and then we looked for a taxi. All the while I am looking desperately for an ATM because it is a small country town and I didn´t know if there would be one, and one of the primary reasons for traveling there was to shop...and if I didn´t have cash...well you can put two together...needless to say they had a couple of ATM´s there BECAUSE it was a tourist hotspot.

Mother, Mike...please don´t kill me, I do confess that I pulled out $100 at their ATM, granted I only came with $4 and two was for the bus, and we had to pay for food, taxis and hostel while there so it wasn´t ALL on regalos(gifts) but most of it was. We got there about 8 blocks from the center of town and had to aimlessly walk down cobblestone road till we found it. Chisara works for CARE(CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. We place special focus on working alongside poor women because, equipped with the proper resources, women have the power to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty.). It´s an international organization that her aunt is the president of and she will be working with here in Quito. They had a stand that Saturday at Otavalo and Chisara will be working with them in the predominantly Black province of Chota.

We got there, listened to CARE people speak about their various projects and then we were on the hunt for an ATM. I found one and made my first of 4 trips to the ATM throughout the day!!! There were kiosks EVERYWHERE along this one street with all kinds of vendors. You would just glance at a stand and someone would walk up in a pusher´s voice and say, ¨Hola, amigo tengo mucho de ________¨ They had everything from scarfs, to shirts, sweaters and a whole host of other handwoven items and paintings. I bought all of those things and more... but it was worth it, an alpaca sweater, the only thing I got for myself cost $10!!! I soon learned the meaning of descuento(discount) because if you looked like you didn´t want it and they´d say ¨quieres un descuento señor¨

Anywho after hours of shopping and walking we ate lunch only as a break for more hours and hours of shopping. Once we had reached our limit, we all 5 piled into a taxi to head for the hostel which one of the girls made reservations for. It cost $10 per person. It was called La Luna and was about 15min away from the city seemingly on a finca(farm) and was surrounded by fincas. At first traveling up the windy and crumbling cobblestone road up to this big house on a farm with a rusty gate, was worrisome and shady, but after meeting the owner and seeing the rooms, the hammocks and the mountain view...it was heaven. The perfect romantic spot for a novia(girlfriend).

There were three rooms and I got the one with the only functioning fireplace. There were two bedrooms with one having a ladder to access the bed up in a small loft above. The view of the mountains surrounding Otavalo were phenomenal as you can see. They also had several HUGE dogs that sorta protected the place I guess. After it got dark we waited for a taxi to take us into town to eat and see a cock fight(pelea de gallos)...illegal in the U.S. We ate at this hookah bar, in which we partook in hookah, jasmine flavored...like the incense...not so tasty. It had a very relaxing ambiance about it. We asked the taxi driver if it was peligroso and responded about 50 times with no, ¨Otavalo es muy tranquilo y bonito¨.

We left the restaurtant and found a cheap phone booth in which I called my dad to find out that UAB lost to MARSHALL!!!! We proceded to ask person after person in this shady looking area where the cock fight was. We finally found it and the cock fight cost $1 and we sat for about 20min before they started with the first bout. It wasn´t as exciting as I anticipated and a little brutal once one of the cocks gave up, but they took the loser out before he REALLY went out.

We came back to a living room full of smoke because one of the fireplaces didn´t lead the smoke out so it just stayed in the room and the fire was out by the time we came back. A guy came back and lit the one in my room and it worked better. It was fun to have a fire again, like back when I was an active scout. The girls didn´t know how to add/build a fire...which was sad, but fun for me. There were also these figurines of obviously African slave head masks on the wall above my bed which was quite creepy.(see picture of me mocking them).

Gosh this is long, but hopefully the pictures will soften the blow. The next day we paid and the hostel made us lunch(me a hamburguesa con queso). And the taxi arrived around 10am and we began the drive up the hill to hike around Lake Mojanda in the mountains above Otavalo. It was the same taxi driver from the night before and the girls thought he was hot...although he had a very long pinky finger nail which Chisara informed me is for snorting coke.......co-cah-eeeenah(cocaine pronounced in español).

It took about 30min up a windy deteriorating road, very creepy but gorgeous. I took a ton of pictures from the taxi itself that turned out phenomenal. Once we got there we walked around the lake a good bit, wrote our names in the sand that was black from volcanic ash surely since one of the large mountains was a volcán(volcano). It was an amazing day up there, with tons of great pictures. The cab esperó por un hora y media antes de salimos por veinte dólares. We then made the trek down the hill, to the hostel to pick up our gifts we bought and down to the bus for the ride home...we were exahusted as I am now after writing this very long post.

....hope you enjoy it and most everybody that knows me, whom is reading this has a gift on the bed!!!!! granted I return on May 17.....

chao(the correct spelling for ciao(italian version) in español

p.s. I have about 10 more pics to upload, too many good one to choose from and it´s taking forever at the computer at my host family´s house...I´ll put more up tomorrow