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We headed north over the equator (haven't stopped there yet to jump across and back again and marvel at the change in water direction - that's for Tuesday!) to Otavalo, a famous market town north of Quito. It's basically where all of the wares are made that are sold throughout the rest of South America - from mantelpiece tourist tat to jewellery and art to alpaca clothing, pashminas and sofa throws. Everyone else in our group has gone mad buying stuff.I'd love to buy some of it (and have regretted a few things along the way - remember those pictures and boxes in El Calafate Steve?) but since I have no home, there's not much point as it would be floating around a post office somewhere for quite a while!
On Monday we did a bit of a tour around the area. There doesn't seem to be much here and I got the impression that our guide (an American who runs our hostel) was struggling to think of places to take us next as we went to some strange places! We started at the Peguche Waterfall (wasn't a good idea to wear flipflops for that muddy and slippery uphill walk!) which is apparently a sacred place where the indigenous Indians come (although I'm still not sure I understand why - don't think it was explained to us!). We then went to Peguche village which is an original Indian settlement, although it now looks like any other local village. We dropped in on a local family who are famous for making and playing traditional musical instruments from Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. The main guy showed us how they make the Andean pipes which was pretty cool and then he showed us a whole array of instruments - the strangest of which was a ukulele type thing that's made out of an armadillo shell - cool! The group then played a song or two. They've actually toured the world playing their music. It's that traditional Andean stuff that became really popular in the early 90s and then started to drive everyone mad as it was played on every street corner in the UK (and I'm sure around the western world!). Was good though.
Next stop was the sacred tree 'El Lechero' which kind of translates to the 'milk tree', so-called because if you break off a leaf or branch, there's a milky substance there. It's centuries old but was fairly small and again, I'm not really sure why it's sacred as it wasn't explained (should google this stuff really shouldn't I?!). Then it was the highlight of the day - the condor park which is a bird sanctuary housing condors, owls, eagles, hawks etc. We got there and it's closed on Mondays! Luckily the guy who runs it is a Dutchman so he let us in for a donation. We were the only people there and the only thing we couldn't do was see the bird display but the actual birds were very impressive. The adult condors refused to come out of their cave but there were 2 juveniles that were big enough and the bald eagle was fantastic! After lunch I had a wander around the market but it all got a bit much with the hassling so I went back to the hotel and chilled out in front of the TV as it was pouring down. Aaah, the tropics eh?
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