Otavalo and Tulcan - our last taste of Ecuador before we're shoved out the door

After leaving Quito we had one more stop to make in Ecuador before getting to the border.  Everyone talks about Otavalo, which is a small, mainly indigenous town about 2 hours north of Quito. It's famous for its market which is the largest Indian market in South America. And even though we don't really have the space to buy anything for ourselves or others, we couldn't miss it.  

The main plaza in Otavalo.

We arrived on a Thursday afternoon which turned out to be good timing, as if we'd arrived the next day we probably wouldn't have found a room. This was because we were just in time for the Yamor festivities, which are held every year to give thanks during the corn harvest season. On the Friday night there was a big street parade to celebrate this time of year and Kurt was lucky enough to be singled out by someone in the parade and given some Yamor to try, which is a traditional liquor made of fermented corn. The parade was a mixture of all different kinds of music and dancing, with groups dressed in different costumes, and the people strutting their stuff ranged in age from about 8 to 98. 

The crowd were all getting into it, and showed their appreciation by rewarding one particularly spry and enthusiastic dancer of about 80 with a glass of beer which he sculled in seconds. Well earned old boy. There were also floats throughout the parade with young women all dolled up and hoping to be crowned the Queen of the festival at the end.  A couple of them even had the royal wave so down pat they put Queen Elizabeth to shame.  They'd clearly been training hard for the occasion.

Twinkle toes earning his beer.

The Otavalo market is on every day, but Saturday is by far the biggest day of all. We started by going to the animal market which is only open from 6am-10am, and is where all the locals buy and sell their creatures, large and small. There were cages and pens of chickens, guinea pigs, cows, pigs, sheep and even kittens and puppies. You have to leave all your animal rights principles and indignation behind as their comfort and well-being isn't high on the list of priorities for the locals. But it's as real and authentic as you get, and we got to see how they live and conduct business without any glossing over for tourists, so it was interesting to see.

After the animal market we headed back into town to wander around the artesan market, which spreads out over several streets and blocks in a riot of colour and noise.  There is stall after stall selling locally woven textiles, jewellery, musical instruments, dream catchers, leather goods, indigenous costumes, hand-painted platters and trays, purses, clothing, spices and food.  After some careful comparison and skillful bargaining, Kurt had himself a couple of local Ecuadorian football (soccer to us) shirts. We managed to resist the imploring calls from all the other stalls to buy their wares. Such is the blessing of having nowhere to put it.  

After randomly running into Anna and Aaron (the Swiss couple) who we hadn't seen for a few weeks, we had to jump on a bus if we wanted to make it to the border town of Tulcan before dark. After waiting about 40mins in a long queue that wound through the bus station, we finally got on our first bus. 45mins later we had to change buses, but had another hour wait til it arrived.  So, after a few hours we finally made it to Tulcan and thankfully found a hotel just before it got dark.  Some Tulcan stats for you: capital of the northern Carchi province; the highest city in Ecuador at 3,000m; 7km from the Colombian border; complete and utter shithole.  Thank god we were only going to be there for about 17 hours. Unfortunately we discovered that our hotel was on top of a club that played the horrible, mind-numbing crap we heard everywhere, where the bass line was exactly the same in every single song. Not really the kind of soothing lullabye we were after.

The next morning before we crossed the border and said goodbye to Ecuador, we thought we might as well check out Tulcan's big drawcard - a topiary garden cemetery. I was a bit skeptical. I mean, how cool can some pruned trees really be? Pretty cool as it turns out. The whole cemetery is full of different types of shrubs and trees pruned into weird and wonderful exotic shapes of animals, angels, geometric shapes and Incan symbols. It's also a functioning cemetery so it's free to the public, and luckily it was quiet on the early Sunday morning we were there. And while it was seen as a bit odd when the creator first started his Edward Scissorhands act on the trees in 1936, it soon became a well-respected site. So much so that the creator is now buried there and his five sons continue his work.

It was finally time to get to the border and officially check out of Ecuador before we were kicked out. Despite the fact that the taxi actually drove us over the bridge to the Colombian side first and we had to walk back across to get our exit stamps for Ecuador, we had no problems.  Hasta luego Ecuador - we'll be back.