Otavalo Markets

About a two-hour drive north-north-east of Quito is a town of about 40,000 people called Otavalo. On Saturdays, Otavalo markets take up a lot more space than the central plaza. On the edge of the town is an animal market. In the central plaza and the streets that surround it, vendors set up stalls to sell all sorts of things. Otavalo is well known for its textiles.

We spent a night here in early June, opting to pay USD $2.50 per person each way for the public bus, rather than the USD $65 each for tickets that were available on Trip Advisor. To be fair, their tickets were round-trip and included lunch. But did somehow manage to find a place to eat lunch for less than the additional $240 their tickets cost. Months of travel in Latin America and Spanish study can come in handy!

Mostly Video

I’ve decided that this blog post will be mostly video. I shot several clips during the day we went to the markets. Starting with a pre-sunrise clip of the town coming to life as we walked down the hill from our hostel. And ending with the sights and sounds as we worked our way through the many streets and stalls full of vendors and their wares.

Just scratching the surface of Otavalo

We walked through the streets and plaza of Otavalo for over two and a half hours and only scratched the surface. Hopefully, you got an idea of what it was like to be there on a Saturday morning. I honestly thought it was going to be a bit more crowded. I was pleased that it wasn’t. We were warned to look out for pickpockets, but there were never any instances of us having to squeeze through people or people rubbing past us.

We racked up a bunch of steps on my pedometer app but we did put some calories back into our bodies at The Pie Shop. They have some pretty yummy pies there. Of course, the kids had to get theirs with ice cream.

As you may have seen, Lucas picked up a souvenir at the market. He has been wearing is red fedora-like hat all over. It is good to see him keep on using it. Some things he has picked up along the way don’t seem to get as much use as I was led to believe they would get.

This was just the beginning of our trip. After the market, we when to a bird park. Unfortunately, my cell phone battery drains at a phenomenal rate. The phone was dead shortly after we got to the park. Karen and Sydney did take pictures and videos. I’ll see if I can either get them to post them, or let me add them to another one of my posts.