On Saturdays, virtually all of Otavalo turns into an open air market, but we spent most of our morning exploring the Plaza de los Ponchos. Two other students and I set out determined to find an alpaca wool scarf. This inevitably turned into purchasing three scarves, an alpaca wool blanket, several weaved bracelets, a shot glass, and a picture frame. Going into this trip I had absolutely no confidence in my Spanish speaking abilities. I have had virtually no practice with it in the past, and while I did take three years of it in high school, I was never very good at it. However, to my surprise, a great deal of understanding the language did come back. I was able to understand a small portion of what was said and I was able successfully barter with many of the vendors to get very good prices on the items that I purchased. I was able to purchase a thick alpaca wool scarf for $10 and a blanket of the same material for $15. I was so excited about this, because I would have paid a considerable amount more had the purchases been in the United States. We had so much fun bartering with the vendors in the morning because they were very patient and eager to talk to us. You could tell they were excited to see tourists and tried their hardest to sell us all of their products. We had lunch at a little cafe in a courtyard where the three of us not Spanish speaking students struggled our way through ordering lunch. I ended up eating some sort of pizza that had olives on it. After lunch we headed back to the hotel to meet the group to head to our afternoon activities.
Our early afternoon was spent at Cuicocha. This was a beautiful ecological reserve where we were able to hike to a spot that overlooked the lake with an Island in the middle of it. Some of the group took a boat ride around the Island, while I went with the hiking group. We only hiked for about an hour, but at an elevation of 10,353 feet it was utterly exhausting. There were several steep stair cases and paths, however the view at the top was definitely worth it. The view was absolutely spectacular. Not only were we able to overlook the lake and surrounding mountainous area, but we were able to get a good view of the neighboring volcano.
After our hike, we visited a Mindala Workshop where we had an explanation of weaving techniques as well as a little cultural information about the various areas of Ecuador. It was very interesting to see the technique by which weavings are made considering we had seen many like them in the market earlier in the morning. We also got to see many pieces of ancient pottery that indigenous Ecuadorians used some 2000 years ago.
Our last scheduled stop was to an Andean Instrument Workshop where got to see a demonstration on how bamboo was used to create musical instruments. We saw (and heard) many different examples of Andean musical instruments ranging from small bamboo instruments to a larger instrument that can be heard from miles and was used to call people from surrounding villages.
By the end of the day we were all so hungry from all the activities. We had dinner at a traditional Ecuadorian restaurant where I had shrimp with some sort of garlic sauce on it. I was very nervous about the food going into the trip, but I had an excellent meal at this restaurant. I'm excited to see what the rest of the trip will bring! Tomorrow we depart to Quito which should be an excellent time.
