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We woke up at 6 a.m. and took nice, hot showers. We didn't know what the shower situation would be for the next few days, so we enjoyed this luxury while we could. We went down to breakfast at 7 o'clock. Patrick was working the front desk, and said good morning to us. We knew not to fill up too much on the buffet today to save room for scrambled eggs and bacon. It was another delicious breakfast with fresh quality coffee and refreshing naranjilla juice. At 7:45, Patrick told us that our guide had arrived. We finished eating, went to the bathroom, and were ready to check out by 8 o'clock. Patrick told us to just leave our extra bag in our room and he would store it for us.
We walked out to the car and were delighted to see Felipe once again. We had met him in the Galapagos, when his cousin Sebastian had been our guide. We got into the spacious back seat of the white Land Cruiser and got comfortable for the ride. The ride to Otavalo was slow-going, winding through mountainous swicthbacks. There was a fair bit of traffic, and we were stuck behind buses and trucks. Vehicles passed one another on blind corners and hills, and there were some close calls. We saw Volcan Cotopaxi's snow-capped peak shining in the morning sunlight. This section of the Pan-American highway has been paved since 1973, which opened up the area immensely. The green mountains look striking aginst the blue sky and white puffy clouds. We had plenty of time to chat with Felipe, catching up a bit and also discussing the rest of our itinerary. The drive to Otavalo took about 2 hours, which meant that we arrived in town at around 10 o'clock. Felipe parked the car and we first went to the Runa Tupari tour office. They are a community-based tourist enterprise which organizes homestays in the native Kichwa communities around Cotacachi. "Runa Tupari" means "Meeting the indigenous people" in the Kichwa language. In the office, they told us to enjoy the world-famous Saturday market and to meet back at the office at 12:30. We stepped out of the office and found ourselves in the so-called Poncho Plaza, the central square around which the Otavalo Saturday Market is situated. There were permanent stalls where vendors who paid higher rent could set up their wares. Streets around the Poncho Plaza are shut down, and vendors would set up tables and tents. We love browsing arround markets, and this one didn't disappoint. We wandered around looking at all of the wonderful things for sale. The colors were mesmerizing. Bright fresh fruits and vegetables, colorful hammocks, tapestries, wool scarves and hats, Panama hats, felt fedoras, and woven handbags were on display. There was a lot of jewelry and I fell in love with a pendant made of silver and spondylus shell, which I purchased. There were a lot of tourists here, so none of the vendors were especially pushy; there was a lot of business to go around and we felt relaxed browsing around. Also, since Ecuador uses the U.S. dollar as its currency, there was no need to do a bunch of hasty calculations when haggling for prices. We bought a small stone pyramid for Steve and a little crocheted alpaca with a family of crotcheted dolls riding it. The seller made sure to point out that one of the small dolls was a baby, an obvious selling point. There were musical instruments (Felipe tried out some flutes), textiles (gorgeous woolen shawls that would look great in Ecuador but might be a bit odd to wear at home), and trinkets and jewelry carved from tagua (vegetable ivory). We saw some paintings for sale, but none of the surreal ones like we had bought in Quito. We were glad that we had bought it when we did. Felipe led us into some brick and mortar shops where people were selling various antiques. It was very interesting. Back out in the streets, we saw people selling wheelbarrows full of strawberries, and women carried around metal bowls filled with a mountain of ice cream which they would dole out for customers. The atmosphere was reminiscent of a carnival. We saw a roasted pig (with its head still attached and a pepper stuck into its ear) being sold as pulled pork. It looked delicious. We passed two men dressed as clowns trying to drum up business for a particular store. They immediately took to Craig and posed with him for a photo. At 12:30, we went back to the Runa Tupari office and met up with Antonio, who would be our homestay host. He was dressed in black jeans, a leather jacket, a black fedora, and had his long black hair gathered back into a ponytail. He led us down the street to Inti Huasi restaurant for lunch. The plate of the day was potato and cheese soup (served with popcorn), ribs, plantains, beans, and passion fruit juice. Craig and I ordered Fantas, not knowing that the juice was included with the meal. We learned that Antonio is a musician, in fact he is a bandleader for a traditional Andean musical group. When I asked if he had children he told us that he has a daughter and a "nieta". My mind spun...was that niece? Granddaughter? I settled on granddaughter. We were happy to hear this; it is always fun to stay with a family that has children around since they easily break the ice. As we finished up our food, a traditional band came into the restaurant and we listened to them play, hoping taht we would get to hear Antonio's band at some point during our stay. We paid for our drinks (the food was all included in our tour) and headed to the car. As Felipe drove us to the village of San Rafael, we passed a statue of Coraza. He is depicted on horseback holding up an open umbrella. This symbolizing that he is blessing the land and summoning rain. San Rafael is situated on the shore of Lake San Pablo. Tortora reeds grow in the lake and are picked, dried, and processed by the residents. There were some bundles of reeds standing on end and drying by the side of the road. We walked down a dirt path between houses, around a corner, and into a workshop which had a beautiful view down at the lake. There were bright yellow corncobs drying in the ceiling rafters. A woman was kneeling on the floor, hand-weaving lengths of reed together and flattening out the result by pounding it with a stone. It is a labor-intensive process and Antonio told us that the resulting mat (which was about a square yard) would be sold for $3. The mats are called "estera". It was amazing how much work went into something that would be sold so cheaply. Unfortunately, we didn't really know what was available for purchase here (obviously we couldn't take a 9 square foot mat home with us). But we enjoyed seeing the way that these natural resources, found on the shore of the nearby lake, were utilized. Next we drove through the rolling hills to Peguche to visit a traditional musical instrument workshop called Ñanda Mañachi. We parked in their driveway and walked around the corner of the building into a courtyard. We took a seat on some benches, and a few other tourists wandered in and did the same. A woman dressed in what we would learn is traditional Otavalan dress for females introduced herself and demonstrated making a rondador (pan pipe) with reeds, string, and a multi-tool. I guess the multi-tool isn't exactly a traditional tool, but as I would later read in Andean Entrepreneurs, by anthropologist Lynn Meisch, the Otavalan people have always incorporated new ideas and tools into their traditional crafts, even as far back as the Inca empire. She measured the reeds against an existing rondador, then scored and cut each piece with the multi-tool. Then she bisected each one and tied it perpendicularly. When she was done, she blew into it to demonstrate that it was complete and functional. After the demonstration, we were free to wander around the room and check out the various hand-made instruments. There were single reed flutes, rondadors, clay ocarinas, and a long reed instrument that looked like a didgeridoo. We learned that certain flutes from Bolivia are called "tarkas." These were displayed on the wall next to guitars made from armadillo shells. We thought that was funny because the album cover for the ELP album Tarkus depicts an armadillo tank. Antonio demonstrated some of the instruments for us ("El Condor Pasa" was the obvious choice of demonstration song). We bought a small rondador. As we walked back to the car, Felipe pointed out some flora. Especially interesting were some beautiful orchids. We hopped back into the truck and stopped at a gas station to fill up the truck's two gas tanks. Next we went to a weaving workshop in the town of Carabuela. The master weaver, Jose Carlos de la Torre, shook all of our hands and welcomed us. He was wearing traditional Otavalan male dress - loose fitting white pants, a white shirt, navy blue vest with a white fedora. His hair was in a long braid. He and his wife showed how they take raw wool and brush it between two spiny paddles (called hand carders) to make it fluffy. They sat on an estera mat on the floor, and their toddler granddaughter sat between them. There were a cluster of very small stickers on the wall behind her head, probably given by some tourists who had thought she was as cute as we did. After hand carding the wool, they attach these small fluffy pieces to one another and run it through a spindle machine several times to make thread. They weave the thread on a backstrap loom and then brush the resulting wool cloth with natural spiny seed pods. Throughout the whole demonstration, their granddaughter stayed close by, very interested in us. Señor de la Torre draped a heavy woolen poncho on me and I was amazed at its warmth. That would be nice in the wintertime at home, if a little unorthodox in style. However it was too bulky to carry around the country with us. Instead, I bought a nice heavy wool scarf that he had woven. We said our goodbyes and he and the granddaughter stood at the gate in identical poses and waved to us as we got back into the truck. As we drove towards Morochos, the village where Antonio and his family lived, we saw signs announcing a minga. Felipe explained that this is community service that everyone is expected to participate in. Participants in the minga are fed and taken care of for the day in exchange for their labor. If you are unable to attend, you need to pay a fine. The philosophy seems to be that if you can't be there physically, you can at least help out monetarily. This reminded us a bit of Bhutan, where people are expected to attend their home-town festivals, and are fined if they are not able to be present. It is an interesting economic model, and seems to work out for them. We drove through Cotacachi, a small city which is known for its leatherwork. We passed through the town of Quiroga and then took some more rural dirt roads which passed through farmland. We reached the small Kichwa village of Morochos, and turned down Antonio's driveway. We met Antonio's wife Rosa, daughter Aida, and Aida's daughter Kehli Sisa, who had just turned 2 years old last week. They call her by her middle name, Sisa, which means "flower" in the Kichwa language. Sisa was wearing modern clothes (a pink sweatshirt, pants, and a pink puppy dog hat with floppy ears, eyes, and a nose) but Rosa and Aida were dressed traditionally. They wore white blouses decorated with embroidery with a navy sash draped over their shoulders. A long navy blue skirt or "anaku" was secured around their waist with a woven belt and reached down to their alpargatas (shoes with rubber soles and black velvet toe covers and heel strap). Strands of coral beads were wrapped repeatedly around their wrists as bracelets or "makiwatana," and they wore multi-strand gold necklaces called "wakas". Their long beautiful straight black hair was tied back in a woven ribbon. Anthropologist Lynn Meisch says that "Today, Otavaleña dress is one of the closest to Inca women's costume worn anywhere in the Andes" (Andean Entrepreneurs, 21). They all had rosy red cheeks from exposure to the mountain climate. They had a small house with a kitchen and two bedrooms. There was a modern bathroom which was attached to the house, but it wasn't accessible from the interior. The kitchen had modern appliances (a refrigerator, separate freezer, a stove with oven, and an additional gas cooktop on top of an old metal cabinet). They had an indoor sink as well as an outdoor 3-basin concrete sink similar to the one Humberto and Paulina have in Guatemala. The house was made from cinderblocks and was covered with stucco. It had a handsome tile roof. Behind the house was a cement patio, a simple wooden fence, and a garden with giant calla lilies and a pretty rosebush. On the other side of the garden was a nice casita (guest house). It had a red brick exterior, wooden shutters, and a tile roof. It was split in half and had two bedrooms, each with their own bath. We were shown to our room (the one on the left) and Felipe got settled in his. The room was quite comfortable. The two beds had traditional woven bedspreads. There was even a fireplace (though there was no wood). Informational posters about Otavalan culture and life were hung up on the walls, as were some woven tapestries. The ceiling was made of what looked like bundles of tortora reeds laid out along wooden beams. The bathroom had a shower, a toilet, and a sink. It looked like there was the capacity for hot water, with some wires leading menacingly to the shower head. Like most of Latin America, the plumbing pipes are only 2 inches in diameter. Because of this, you can't flush toilet paper and instead have to throw it away in the ubiquitous bathroom wastebasket. The setting was very bucolic. Once we had put away our luggage, we wandered around the yard. Behind the casita was a field where two cows were grazing. There were mountains off in the distance in almost every direction. Their property dropped off into a deep ravine. We met Max, the family dog, wandering around the yard. They also have a small black and white cat. When we asked their cat's name, they laughed. Apparently they just call it "Chipi", which simply means "cat" in Kichwa. The family speaks Kichwa to one another, but they are also fluent in Spanish. However, children don't learn Spanish until they go to school, so Sisa didn't speak Spanish yet. Several young men arrived at the house. It turned out that Antonio and his band Chaski Ñan would be playing a gig tonight, and the other bandmembers showed up at the house to practice. It was like having a private concert. Antonio played the flute, guitar, and violin, and also sang. The others played guitar, flute, and rondador. A young boy played a drum. Rosa invited us into the kitchen and made us instant coffee. We interacted with Sisa, who was a bit shy and unsure whenever Aida or Rosa were not right with her. Taking pictures of her and showing them to her loosened her up a little. We could hear the band practicing. We really enjoy traditional Andean music, so this was quite a treat. After finishing our coffee at the kitchen table, we headed outside to watch the band. Sisa also really loves the music, and she was dancing around. It started to rain a bit. At 6:30 p.m., Antonio and the band left for their gig. Sisa fell asleep, and we had dinner with Rosa and Aida: potato soup, tasty chicken, rice, beets, and melloco, a potato-like vegetable, with guava juice to drink. It was delicious; fresh home-made simple food, yet very nourishing. Chipi kept coming over to us to say hello as we ate. One thing that I really liked was the way they served the food family-style. You could take as much or as little as you wanted, which was helpful since my appetite gets smaller in high altutudes like this. As we were very close to the equator, days and nights were equal here. Twelve hours of light from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and then 12 hours of darkness. This tends to skew people's routines and they are generally early to bed and early to rise by our standards. At 7:45, we went to our room. It was a bit chilly at this altitude at night, and as we changed into our thermal underwear for bed, we were grateful for the estera reed mats on the floor which kept our stockinged feet off of the cold floor tiles. Houses aren't heated here, though there was the fireplace. Even if there had been firewood, we wouldn't have lit a fire. It wasn't that cold. Our room had two beds, a single and a double. We decided on sharing the double, but the mattress was a bit uneven which meant that Craig was on a bit of a slant all night. We added the fleecy sleeping bags which Felipe had brought for us to use when we are camping later in the trip to the blankets already on the bed and were quite cozy. 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    Woman makes a rondador, Ņanda Maņachi instrument workshop in Peguche          Chaski Ņan Rehearsal  
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