| Friday to Otavalo |
[Apr. 22nd, 2007|10:37 pm] |
We woke up early, again, to meet our taxi to take us to Otavalo, a wonderful little town well known for its crafts market. Maya had been there once already with the Rotary group, but wanted to go back. The taxi, more like a modern station wagon, picked us up in front of our hostal with no problem. We then went tooling all around the streets of Quito and picked up another woman, an Ecuadorian who sat in the front seat next to the driver. So far so good. Then we tooled around some more and heard the driver say that there were two more people joining us. Uh, okay, there was only 1 seat left. Turns out the 2 people were two very young little girls who had spent some time with their aunt in Quito and were headed back to their mom in Otavalo. They were 7 and 4 years old and they were going in this taxi with total strangers and no adult to accompany them! The 4 year old got to sit on a seat in the back, with all the packages and letters being delivered, and the 7 year old sat next to me and stared at me most of the trip. The driver gave the girls little barf bags and we were on our way. Thankfully, no one had to use the bags, especially since Maya realized that we accidentally threw away the motion sickness pills she'd bought the day before in our rush to leave the hostal on time! I felt bad for the little 4 year old thinking she was getting something special, and got an empty bag. The drive was uneventful and we ended up in a quaint little village at the taxi company's office and the driver pointing us in a general direction to find the market. It was easy to find, and it was so early that we were almost the only tourists there to buy anything! By the early afternoon, though, there were plenty of other people, and we'd done plenty of shopping, too!
Here is what it looks like on Saturdays, it wasn't that crowded on Friday:
Thanks to the travel book I had, I was able to notice the subtle differences in the dress and features of the people in this northern part of Ecuador versus Cuenca in the southern part. First of all, the folks in Otavalo are SHORT! I was a totally average height for women in this town, and saw many many women significantly shorter than me! Also, the women dress colorfully, but their tops are billowy white blouses in Otavalo, but not so in Cuenca. Cuencans wear white hats, the "Panama hat" woven of straw, and Otavalians tended to wear brown or black hats, I think made of felt. And one more noticeable thing was that the people of northern Ecuador had darker brown skin than the Ecuadorians where Maya lives. We learned a theory about that on Sunday (which I'll explain when we get there).
We had lunch at Ali Allpa, a restaurant in our guide book which was situated on one of the streets bordering the market. After asking what the "menu del dia" was, we decided to order something else. I got lasagna and yummy juice, Maya got chicken in lemon sauce. Both were delicious, however, as we ate the entire restaurant filled up with locals and everyone except us was eating the menu del dia! That's basically an entire meal for $2 - juice, soup, what looked like fried rice or stir fry, and a small dessert. Neither of our meals was more than $3 or $4, and we also tried a "Inka Kola" which is a green soda and kind of tasted like lime snow cone syrup with fizz. After lunch we bought more stuff from the market before heading back to Quito by bus.
Shopping in Ecuador at the Plaza de Ponchos market was quite the experience in bartering. We'd approach, or more often be approached by, vendors who would tell us in Spanish how good quality their goods were, then quote us an insanely low price which we were then supposed to barter them even lower. Maya and I both gave it a good try, but basically the prices they were asking were already so cheap that we felt really wrong arguing it lower! We had to make 2 trips to the bank machines because we bought lots o stuff! It was fun, just like vacations should be!
We miraculously found our way to the bus station where some young teenage boys were hustling people into the bus for "Quito, Quito!" While waiting in the bus, various vendors of frozen yogurt pops, waters, and sodas would come into the bus approaching the captive tourists. Once on the road, the bus would stop at random places and pick up more people until the whole thing was pretty full. Once we were close to Quito, or maybe in the outskirts, another vendor came on the bus and made a little speech in the front, which neither of us understood. Then he strolled down the aisle and handed candy bars to everyone on the bus. He gave us 3. Apparently the speech was a sales pitch because then he came back around collecting either money or the candy bars back. We bought ours for 50 cents - not each, total. Another vendor came on the bus later that did the same thing, but with what looked like cd's or video games. We didn't buy any of those.
Next entry, back in Quito later that night and Maya's adventures in Gringolandia.... |
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