This past weekend, in honor of NOBODY in our family being sick, we decided to hunt for an adventure. :) We decided to visit the market in a town called Otavalo, a couple hours North of Quito. The market there specializes in Quichua hand-crafts and other artisan items, like embroidered blouses and table cloths, leather goods, hand woven straw hats, bright colored shawls and of course knitted goods made from alpaca wool. We had been wanting to wander through it and had not yet had the opportunity; also, we wanted a good excuse to learn to use the bus system. The Quito bus system is known for being nice and organized...especially if you know the system...which of course, we did not. :) However, we knew where the bus station was nearest our house, and learned from our downstairs neighbor the name of the next terminal we needed. All went extremely smoothly until we rolled into Otavalo and realized that we really didn't know which stop we should get off at. Taylor asked a man sitting close to him and was told we should get off at the next stop...so we did. Taylor had been to Otavalo once before (when he came to Ecuador alone last November) and had a vague idea where the market was. (This is still a foreign concept to my brain...just because I might have ridden somewhere in a CAR in NOVEMBER, there is no way I could tell you that (from the bus stop) you should go down hill, to the left over a bridge and then down a few blocks...but I am very glad my husband can. :) We were still several blocks from the core of the market when we were swallowed up in a crowd of hawkers and customers. On a weekday, Otavalo hosts a bustling open-air market...but on Saturday, which was when we went, it turns into something incredible. Temporary tents line the street for blocks filled with food vendors selling anything and everything- potatoes, corn, oats,quinoa, bananas. Swimming upstream through the mass of humanity flowing down into the market are the walking peddlers, each calling over the other, "un dollar, un dollar, solo un dollar"; there are men pushing snack carts, little kids selling fruit from their family's stands, open briefcases full of watches, memory for your cell phone! As we got closer to the center of the market, the people thinned out quite a bit...proportionally to the price of the items being sold it seems. We walked through one corridor/side street that seemed to be their version of an outlet mall...all imported American clothing - we didn't figure we needed name brand American jeans or pull-overs, so we went on. After making our way to at least a portion of the inner market, we shopped around through the maze of sweaters, scarves and other handmade articles until it was time for lunch. We braved the crowds again to find the market version of a "food court". By the time we finished our lunch, it had started to rain, but since most of the inner market is shaded with tarps, it didn't matter much. We bartered for the last few things we wanted and waited for the storm to pass. By the time we felt we should be getting back, the rain was over and we headed back to the bus station; which in this case didn't really look like a "station"- it was a parking lot with buses in it. Just as we were wondering how we should know which bus was which, we heard a driver (who must have learned how to sell tickets from the hawkers at the market) standing in the middle of everything yelling, "Quito, Quito, 5 min.! " So, we happily got on the bus and waited for it to get going. This would have been wonderful, except we didn't happen to notice that not all of the windows opened...only those in every other row. To us, it seemed very warm and humid after the rain, especially as the bus got full...unfortunately, the Ecuadorians (who had the windows) didn't think so. Oh well. We survived the bus and learned enough that we felt comfortable taking the city bus Sunday morning...which earned us ice cream. (I made a deal with my family that if we ride the bus twice instead of taking a taxi, we can buy ice cream out of the savings. :) It made for a fun weekend and a real experience. I don't think I'll ever again read the Biblical accounts of the market places and the "press of the crowds" without thinking of this kind of market.
(By the way, sorry about the lack of pictures. I went to go see what we had, and realized we took not ONE...we were busy trying not to lose any children. :)
