north

initially i had planned to blog every day. obviously thats not going to work. so my new goal is once a week. really, i should blog everytime i get somewhere new, to write about the place i was prior, but nobody needs to read all that (i.e. im lazy and the internet gets too damn expensive). so we´ll settle on once a week. lots of things will happen that will go unblogged (egads.) but, i will somehow manage to still consider them worthy experiences.

so, my lovely readers, here is what we have not discussed: otavalo, the hike to the waterfall, the andean peñas, quito part 2, tena, isla de los monos, white water rafting, and, the here and now: baños. ill start with otavalo, and i probably wont get much farther than that.

after i last blogged, we hung out in quito for a night, which i enjoyed. quito is big but pretty, has many modern conviniences but is still different enough from home to be interesting. everyone ive met on this trip has said the same ting about quito - "skip it - its just a city. big, dirty and scary". true. but some of us happen to like big, dirty, and scary. besides, its really not that dirty or scary. so anyway, we hung out, met up with vincent and some of his friends, who are very nice, and drank wine. yey wine! it had been awhile since i had wine. all the while we were thinking, of course, of moving to quito. but we do that everywhere.

the next morning was friday, and we set out early for otavalo to ensure we would find a hotel room in time for the big saturday market there. this is the big enchilada of markets, complete with seperate textile, produce, and live animal markets. its really quite bustling and colorful, and an exciting sight, especially (as my ecuador book points out) with the high mountains surrounding. the goods are quite tempting and i did go a bit bezerk, buying alpaca sweaters and beaded bracelets with wild abandon. in the end i had to buy a huge woven bag to attach to my backpack to carry it all. ugly american.

and at night, in otavalo it gets cold and there are a few peñas to go to. these are places where indigenous music is played. we found one which i suspect was a tourist trap, but was wonderful nonetheless. it had a roaring fire and this band that played andean music, which sounds like a cross between irish and colombian. it was still chilly, even with the fire so we drank warm canelazo, a drink for which i posted the recipe in a prior blog entry. it was nice sitting there, drinking the warm drink in front of the fire while listening to the live music. we liked it so much we went twice in a row. but this is why it was a tourist trap: on both nights, massive groups of french people were there, with one ecuadorian guide, doing god awful dances. 2 different groups. the dances were truly horrific. it was like night of the living dead, the way they were hopping about, limbs flying, scaring the bejesus out of everyone. they were shameless and they went on and on. the thing is, on both occasions there was an indiginous (otavalo is primarily indiginous. the indiginous wear long thick braids down the center of their backs, fedoras, and, at times, navy blue ponchos. they are highly regarded here, unlike the indiginous in our country for which it seems there is little regard, on the part of the government and all the auxillary Evils Who Determine Things, and they are overall a very friendly group. an example of the high esteem in which they are held here in ecuador, which is not a perfect country but does some things right, is that they are not required to cut their braid if they enter into the army. but then, maybe thats not such a big deal. maybe thats just the way it is and would be in any civilized place.) guide, who was leading all of these dances. it seemed, to me, that the guides were fucking with the tourists to make them look stupid, because the guides couldnt seem to stop giggling, on both occasions. heh. anyway, that was otavalo. oh, and there was a walk to a waterfall which was great cuz we got lost and scaled a mountain (ok, fine, hill) and came out on top of the waterfall so we sat there, at its very edge, on shiny rocks and the sun came down and the waterfall splashed us and we looked down and felt dizzy.

then, we went back to quito for a night where Not Much happened, except that i think i ate bad chicken and we paid too much for everything. the next morning we set off for tena, which is the gateway to both the andes and the jungle. do you really want to hear about tena right now? you must be exhausted or bored. and anthony keeps cutting his evil eyes at me, waiting for the computer.