Up North

This weekend I crossed two big items off of my Ecuador must-do list: the Otavalo Textile Market, and Laguna Cuicocha.

My friend and I started our weekend in Otavalo on Friday night at a clean, friendly, $4/night hotel (with hot water!) and woke up at 7:00 am to hit the animal market. This was something from another time. Our hotel was only a five minute walk from the market, and after 3 minutes we began seeing Otavaleño men and women dragging pigs and piglets squealing up and down the street on the way too or from the market, and only a 5 minute walk from our hotel was the market, a large field with people and animals milling about in a sort of semi-controlled chaos. It had rained all afternoon and evening, and farm animals have never been great about controlling their bodily functions, so the market was a pit of mud, dung, feet, and hooves. Many of the women walked barefoot in the muck to protect their shoes.

Men and women of all ages held groups of pigs or goats at the end of short ropes, the buyers and sellers bartering at full force. We pushed through the crowd, stepping over ropes and running into several other wide-eyed gringos as we made our way to the other side of the field. As we chatted with a Otavaleño woman trying to sell us fajas and cintas (traditional woven hair-ties and belts), a large pig got loose and ran screaming through the crowd, dragging its rope and a short fencepost pulled from the ground. Once he was subdued, we climbed a short rise for a safer vantage of the entire market. To our right, we could see the pigs and goats we´d nearly tripped over, and to the left, cows, bulls, and a single llama pulled at their ropes. Behind us were several stands selling coffee, empanadas, chicken, and rice.

The women wore long, woolen wrap skirts in dark blue, green, grey, or black (and sometimes with pinstripes). Into their ankle lenth skirts they tucked satiny white shirts with ruffles and flounces as well as embroidery, sequins, or beading. Their hair was worn long and braided, tied back with a strip of colorful woven fabric, and many also wore wool shawls or ponchos around their shoulders, sometimes tied to hold a baby or a small child. Around their necks were stacks of gold colored beads, and the entire look would be topped off with old-fashioned fedora. On younger women, any of these items may or may not be replaced with jeans or a store-bought sweater. The men wore jeans and either black rubber galoshes or cowboy boots, and were as likely to wear a leather jacket as a dark wool poncho. They too wore their thick black hair long and braided, and went bare-headed or with a felt fedora or leather cowboy hat.

After the animal market, we dropped off a couple things at our hostel and made our way to the textile market. It was about 8:00 am, and up and down every street vendors were setting up their stalls and pitching their wares. The Saturday market had taken over the entire town, and we had absolutely no idea where to begin. We headed away from the center of town, hoping to find an outer edge of the market. The farther we walked, the more the market seemed to be geared towards locals rather than tourists. We came across stands selling heaps of identical black high tops or the flat white espadrilles favored by the Otaveleño women, and stalls selling nothing but plastic containers or other household goods. Every now and then, a vendor would walk by announcing his wares: "papel higiénico," (toilet paper) or any number of other hygienic or household products. Once we reached the produce section, we turned around and headed for the textiles - the center of the market, geared more towards tourists (or, entirely towards tourists) - to spend our hard earned cash.

Coming Soon:

• The Textile Market
  
• Laguna Cuicocha
  
• Cárcel de las Mujeres