Otavalo

Last weekend, our BCA group took a bus up to Otavalo, a city two hours north of Quito. Otavalo is most famous for its incredibly large market, where vendors are selling lots of woven crafts (rugs, wall-hangings, hammocks, bags, scarves, etc.), cheap imitations of Andean instruments (panflutes, regular flutes, mini-guitars), and lots of little trinket type crafts. It was cool to look at everything. While the amount of vendors was overwhelming, I quickly realized that they were all selling really similar stuff, sometimes the exact same stuff. I bought a few things, including a cheap flute that I paid too much for. My plan is to get really good and then buy a professional grade one!

On Saturday night, most of us went out to a pizza place, where there was an Andean band playing traditional Andean music. I LOVE the Andean music! The rhythm is provided by a guitar and a smaller, 10-string guitar, and the bass by a drum, and then the melody by the flute and panpipe. It´s awwwesome! So I was totally into the music, and I think the band noticed. During a break, I went up to ask about the drum -- turns out it´s called a ¨bom bom¨ here -- and then the drummer let me try it out. Then, he handed me a panpipe to play with them during the next song! Let me just say that these aren´t 3 minute pop songs. I was probably standing\dancing up there with them for over 5 minutes, squeaking a note out of the panpipe every once in a while, but mostly enjoying the music that they were playing. Hah, but it was so fun! Some of my friends took some photos, and one even took a video, so maybe, if you´re lucky, those will emerge at some point for you all to see.

We also paid a visit to the ¨Mitad del Mundo¨ (Center of the World) monument, located directly on the equator at 0´0¨. Why is THIS spot the center of the world, you ask, when every spot on the equator could be the center of the world? Well, good question! They say this site is especially special because it is situated in the mountains, with an excellent view of the sky. It was from this place that the indigenous people many many years ago observed the cosmos and realized that the equator was there. Other spots along the equator, including the Galapagos Islands, the Amazon Rainforest, Indonesia, Africa, aren´t as special as this place because they don´t have the clear, unobstructed view of the sky. While it is a touristy spot, it was still cool to see and literally be in two hemispheres at once. This is my mandatory "one foot on each hemisphere" photo:


We also took a hike to and around an amazing waterfall. It is a common pilgrimage site for indigenous people to come and bath in, and we saw some people doing that. There were also people repelling down the waterfall, which looked crazy sketchy! They had their ropes tied around rocks under water at the top of the waterfall. AHH! But the guy doing it made it down alive!

Here are a few of the pics I took over the weekend.

Pretty butterfly


Woman making yummy empañadas


A small shop near Otavalo


a beautiful pup