As much as it blows my mind, I am officially looking at my last week of working in Ecuador. The girls get here Saturday and that kicks off 4 weeks of travel for me around Ecuador, Peru and Chile. I’m very excited that I have a little time for travel post-working, but I’ll be sad to leave Ecuador and my family. It really has been an incredible 5 or 6 months (how long have I been here? I don’t even know.) But it feels too soon to do a big, sad “I’m going to miss Ecuador” post so I’ll talk about my weekend instead.
A couple weeks back when I went to Baños my cell phone somehow got mixed up with Dan’s things, so we decided to meet up in Otavalo this weekend so I could retrieve my phone. Otavalo is probably an hour north of Quito, but it took me about 3 hours to get there on the bus. Since I was making the trip, Dan suggested I make a weekend of it and join his boss and his family to hike one of the local volcanoes (we ended up not hiking, but that was the original plan). Dan’s boss, Peter, is super nice and has this lovely family who offered to let us stay at their house in nearby Cotocachi. I got to meet Pete’s family (impossibly sweet daughters Nina and Camila and very nice wife Celeste) and Pete made us some great lasagna for dinner. The night involved Nina showcasing her favorite Disney movies, a Michael Jackson dance competition, some really bad wine that Dan picked up and eventually Celeste’s friends coming over and teaching us how to dance salsa. It was good.
Pete's backyard in Cotacachi
Making a goofy face, but I'm in love with my new "scat" (scarf/hat) so it had to be featured.
The next morning we had intended to climb Fuya Fuya, but Celeste wasn’t really feeling up for going and Dan and I probably couldn’t have done the hike without Peter. So we scratched those plans, thanked Peter and his family for their hospitality and headed back into Otavalo for market day.
Otavalo is a town known for its huge, fantastic artisan market. I believe the Otavaleños are known for their textile production, but you can buy just about anything in Otavalo on market day. There is an overwhelming amount of STUFF there, so it was easy for us to spend the majority of the day just wandering around marveling at all the things crammed into that town for people to buy. It’s also incredibly amusing to watch foreigners haggle for their artisan wares all day, so that occupied our time as well.
Market day in Otavalo
We lucked out at night and a huge outdoor concert was set up in the park for a musician originally from Otavalo called Sisay. I’m not really sure what the genre of music was, but it reminded me of an Ecuadorian Yanni. They played for hours and it was pretty great to just chill outside with live music and half the town of Otavalo. Night ended up with us checking out the nightlife in town (amazingly we didn’t see any gringos. They must have all been tired from the day of bargain shopping).
And now I’m back in Tumbaco. I have tests to prep for the kids tomorrow and some work to finish up for The Quito Project, but nothing too stressful for my last week of work. Diane’s son, David, is visiting right now so I might take him around Quito a little later in the week. Vamos a ver.
