Otavalo Market and Festival

Ecuador's first impression
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After an uneventful boarder crossing, I took a bus for about 3 hours to a town called Otavalo, famous for it Saturday market.

One big shock now being in Ecuador is that you have to pay for everything in dollars. I need to get used to haggling over 50 cents.  1000 Colombian pesos is much easier to fight about even though it is worth less than 50 cents.

I walked around town for a little, and bought some things for hiking.  Here, like Venezuela they have Nabisco/Kraft products, which means real Oreos!!!

Welcome to Ecuador
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The town is famous in South America for it's Saturday morning market.  I got home at around 2AM and was woken up by people setting up the stalls for the market at 5AM.  Finally at around 8AM, I gave up trying to sleep and checked out the market.

The center of the market is in a main square, but spreads out on all the streets from there.  That is why they were setting up right outside my hotel window.  The crafts were pretty impressive.  If I was only a shopper, I am sure that I would have bought something, but I resisted.

Kid on the bus
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Right now there is a 2 week festival going on in this town.  Lots of different events.   I got to go to a huge concert with all different types of music.   It was in the parking lot of the bus station.  I had the pleasure of a little boy trying to pick my pocket, without success.

There was also a really colorful parade with people from different villages in the area in their custom clothing, doing traditional dances.  It was a parade I actually liked.

Festival Concert... Reggaton
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And then they also had a make-shift bull fighting ring. Instead of trying to kill the bull, it was just a bunch of drunk people from the town trying to tease the bull.  The bull I saw just stared at the people wondering why they kept running at him.  They looked pretty stupid... good job bull!!!