Otavalo

We spent last weekend in Otavalo. The city is super famous for its huge outdoor market which takes place largely on Saturdays and Tuesdays. I bought some cool stuff made of wool and alpaca. Liz and I also purchased a pretty cool piece of art that is pretty funky and supposedly made of corn that is crushed up and made into pigment.

We stayed in a gorgeous hostal called the Hostal Riviera Sucre. We hiked both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday we hiked around the crater of an old volcano called Mojanda which is now filled with a lake. We were told it is the highest elevation lake in Ecuador and considering how long the bus took going straight uphill to get us there, I believe it.

Sunday we hiked a few miles with all our bags to Lago San Pablo, next town over from Otavalo. We had an amazing lunch on the beautiful lake and got to see some quality rural Ecuador in the process.

Saturday night we had gone to a peña, which is a ¨place¨by translation, but its a bar/night club sort of location where there is always a live band. There was an Andean/modern fusion type band that night, but they were pretty fun, especially when they played the more traditional sounding songs. Andy, our group leader, introduced Hardeep and me to the delight and the destruction that is Zhumir.