otavalo

The day after our party in Quito, we said goodbye to Elea and hopped a bus to Otavalo. Otavalo is a city known for its wonderful handicraft market, as well as it's Crater lake, which houses 4 active volcano peaks! These were the highlights of our trip and when we adrived at 3:00 pm, we were excited to get going, however we needed food first. Ecuador loves pizza, so we decided to get some from a place with a wood oven! Unfortunately it was almost unbearable to sit in the resturaunt, as the ovens chiminey was blocked. In the end we got undercooked, soggy pizza that was a bit disappointing. Abandoning our original plan to check in at the hostel before going to the market, we just headed straight over since it was due to close in an hour... There I found gifts for important people, and some for me :). We then lugged all of our treasure over to the main road where we waites 40 minutes for a bus... We finally made it to what google said was our hostel to be greeted by darkness and not much else. we were close to giving up when finally the hostel owner explained that this run doqn, center of town building was just the reception, and the real hostel was a collection of rooms and cottages about 8 mins away.. we were so hungry however, so we asked them to hold our bags while we went into the small town square to get dinner , which was wondeeful as there was a celebration for Saint Juan happening with fireworks and a band.. it was awesome.. finally we made our way to the hostel with the help of the owner, and we were greeted by 8 dogs, 2 kittens, 1 alpaca, and cows, chickens etc. We got our room and chilled out for a bit, before going to bed to prep for tommorow :)Read more