Hola All,

We just returned from visiting Otavalo, a small town two hours North of Quito. It is famous for its market on Saturdays, which people travel from all over South America to attend. We arrived on Friday to explore the town and had dinner in a lovely restaurent that had a band playing traditional Andean music. It was amazing to see people so energized by playing music and a great place to drink a few beers by a blazing fire (yes, it is quite cold). I have noticed wherever you go in Ecuador you can always here music playing. It is like having a constant soundtrack to accompany your travels. We woke up really early on Saturday morning to go to the Animal Market, I was very excited to see and possibly purchase a llama. I made a fatal error in judgement, I wore a combination of sandal and socks (this it turns out is completely inappropriate footwear to attend an Animal market). We arrived to see thousands of chickens, chicklets, ducks, pigs pissing, cows, goats and sheep but not a llama in sight. I attempted to navigate the near constant streams of piss and avoid the neat piles of steaming poo but after thirty minutes I was beginning to feel the onset of foot and mouth disease so we left promptly. We strolled the streets until we reached the fresh produce market. I have never seen the sheer variety or volume of bananas in my life before! We were blown away by all the fresh and unusual looking fruits & vegetables (pictures to be posted later). My favorite moment was when we entered an area selling cilantro and the smell was overpowering, Matt looked absolutely revolted and claimed he could taste it. Afterwards we wondered the streets and central market area looking at weaving, leather goods, wood carvings, and carved gourds. We ended up impressing ourselves with our bartering abilities and bought a ridiculous amount of things (and then a bag to fit them all it). This morning we woke at six since we had arranged a tour of the local crater lakes and small communities which produce the goods. We had to be at the travel agency at 7 am, unfortunately we waited for an hour only to learn that our reservation had been forgotten and we would be unable to go. This produced a terrible mood in both of us (who I think are generally good natured people), luckily it was resolved by market retail therapy as we rationalized we could spend the money that would have gone towards the tour on treats (and we also told ourselves that the tour would have been lame at best). Tomorrow we are heading into the Amazon for five nights of camping! We are very excited and will write-post pictures when we return. Ciap