This weekend has been spent in Otavalo, shopping. Hurrah! Otavalo is a town 3 hours north of Quito, with nothing much in it apart from the most massive market, sprawling out from the central plaza, full of bright colourful clothes and shawls and jewllery and souvenirs. It was amazing to walk through. We all attempted some bargaining with meagre Spanish, were chased round the market by a little old beggar woman, and brought cool bright stripy baggy trousers. I also found some fluffy souvenir llamas - hurrah!
We stayed in a fantastic little hostel just outside the town, up on the mountainside, and walked down into Otavalo a couple of times. The place is not nearly as modernised as Quito, and on our walks we passed cows and pigs tethered to the side of the track, and little grubby children playing by the roadside (who greeted us with ´hola!´ and were fascinated by our cameras), and withered old women working in the fields, and stray dogs all over the place. Barking dogs and traffic are the two things garaunteed to wake you up in Ecuador.
Aside from visiting the market we also found a waterfall, which was right at the end of this long overgrown little muddy path which wound itself across the mountainside, and it was gorgeous.
As for musical encounters, so far we´ve had quite a bit of appalling Latin American pop (in the bus to Otavalo), a dodgy group in a bar playing U2 and Robbie Williams, a stall of armadillo charangos in the market (hurrah!), and a fantastic lively little band that we discovered walking past a restaurant in Otavalo. However when we went back to the restaurant 10 minutes later for lunch they´d been replaced with a CD of panpipe classics, including Tears in Heaven and Silent Night. Hmm.
On the bus back to Quito yesterday I was squashed up right behind the drivers seat, and it wasn´t good, because I could see exactly what the driver and our bus were doing. Drivers in Ecuador don´t appear to have much regard for the right side of the road, and overtaking seems to be a matter of principle. At one point we were approaching a bend in the road and two cars decided to overtake a bus overtaking a bus. Argh! I don´t understand how they manage it, although maybe Latin Americans all have some secret sixth sense for knowing when another vechile is approaching or not.
And today we started the Spanish lessons: one on one, for four hours each morning. Hardcore! This morning we did the alphabet. My teacher doesn´t speak much English at all, so communication was mainly through nodding, grinning, and blank looks. It should be good though.
Nearly everyone reading this will know that I´m not very good at talking (to my own annoyance), and so things are still a bit of an effort, but I´m hoping they´ll get easier. Maybe with the aid of alcohol. The place though, at least, is absolutely amazing: beautiful and colourful and exciting and full of friendly people. I´m so happy to be here.
