Markets and Music in Otavalo

Amber at animal market
see all photos »

(Matt)

Otavalo is about 2.5 hours North of Quito and is famous for its huge Saturday market. A lot of our decorations in our house came from Otavalo ten years ago when I came here. Otavalo is still in full effect. Apparently Otavalo is a stop for the package tours to and from the Galapagos, but if you are a gringo in Otavalo, you have no standing snob anybody else because, I assure you, you bought something too. And yes, you are going to hang it on your wall when you get home. Though touristy, Otavalo is very nice. We were certainly not going to miss the market because it is touristy. We hopped on a bus Friday morning and left Baños with the volcano looking much more active than it had the night before. About five or six hours later, we were here.

Beautiful woman at afternoon market
see all photos »

(Amber)

Saturday started very early with a walk to the edge of town to watch the Animal Market, where locals come each week to sell and trade livestock. Seeing the whole process of food so up-close-and-personal is always interesting. We´re so far away from it in the States...here, you see things grazing, then slaughtered, then cooked. Makes what you´re eating much more real. You can see my the photos how many whole pigs there are on spits and grills here. And then we saw pigs that were none to happy to be at the market. Sort of made me want to be vegetarian....but only for a few minutes.

Matt´s new band
see all photos »

The animal market was a trip. Really fun to watch. Then, on to the crafts market.....and then to the jam, which Matt describes below. We´ve had a great time here. I love Ecuador more than I can say.

(Matt)

We´re staying at Hotel Riviera-Sucre on Garcia Moreno. It´s an old converted home, and it´s gorgeous. It has a nice garden and courtyard, and we have gotten the best sleep of the trip (Amber thinks that this may be because we have separate beds, and she may be right. But the room is very quiet too.). Our room is large, bright, and overlooking a garden for $22 per night. Not bad.

The first day we got here, I broke out the guitar and played a little in our room. The sound of the guitar echoed around the garden and courtyard area, and the manager of the hotel came and got me and introduced me to her husband, Willy (he really goes by Willy and told me when we met that he had a gringo name, though he was born in Bolivia and has lived his whole life here...and people call him Willy). Willy asked me if I wanted jam with him and the owner of our hotel. Of course I thought this was a great idea. We made a plan to jam that night, but when we came back from dinner Willy had just left. So we made a plan through the hotel staff to jam at 8pm last night.

At 8pm last night, I met the owner of the hotel, Freddie, an Ecuadorian man who married a woman from Belgium. We started to play. Willy showed up a little later with a Charrango, a tiny little guitar-looking instrument that he had purchased special for the occasion that day. After about an hour, Freddie´s daughter, who is a professional flute player in the Quito symphony, who happened to be home prior to a two month trip to Switzerland to study music, arrived and completed out little band.

Of course, I didn´t know any of their songs, and their songs had pretty complicated chords, so I just winged it. We played from 8pm until almost midnight. It was a blast. While I actually suck at improvising to the blues...I don´t know why, but I don´t have much experience with the blues, and I always get lost when the song modulates...it´s my little demon in this life....I am actually very comfortable (dare I say proficient) at improvising to Latin music. It suits me better for some reason. In fact, during like 3.5 hours of playing lead and two and three note chords over traditional South American songs, I only fell out of key once at the very end...I´ll blame it on the red wine. Anyway, it was a really good time.

We had a small audience for the whole evening, and one guy played a few songs and left. Amber sang a few songs, including Angel from Montgomery, and everyone bragged about how beautiful her voice was. The hotel manager complemented Amber again at breakfast on her singing voice. It made the extra inconvenience of backpacking with a guitar validated to the fullest.

Prior to the jam yesterday, we did what you do in Otavalo...we shopped. We are going to ship all this stuff home from Quito tomorrow. We ate a crusty whole trout with our hands. It was a delicious....and we ate the best pie (yes pie) at what I think must be the most unique successful business venture that I have seen down here, a pie shop on the square of the market. Under normal circumstances, I can take or leave pie, but this pie is amazing...I mean, you actually can´t imagine how unbelievable this pie is. Oh my God, it is the best pie in the world (no offense to my Mother In Law, Donna, who makes a mean apple pie), and I have told the owner of the shop that on two occasions. I will tell her again today because we are certainly going back.

OK, well, we are going on a hike today to some neighboring towns. Gotta roll. Here are the pictures from yesterday:

http://share.shutterfly.com /action/welcome?sid=8AatmbZk0Zt FGiI

We hiked for about 2 hours just outside of Otavalo in a pristine (and totally empty of anyone but us) natural reserve. Click here for photos:

http://share.shutterfly.com /action/welcome?sid=8AatmbZk0Zt FGkQ