Otavalo Artesanal Market

As the previous blog states, our journey to Otavalo begins the next day with one of the biggest open air markets in the world . We especially wanted to make the journey to Otavalo on Friday as the market only takes place once a week on a Saturday. Luckily, we got there at 11pm, so went straight to bed, ready for a fresh start the next morning. We had a bit of a lay in as we were really tired and got up to go and find somewhere to have breakfast. The hostel Chasqui where we are staying is within walking distance of the markets, so we decided to stop and eat breakfast, and then we would walk around the markets. There is also an animal market that is held every Saturday morning, but I didn't like the idea of visiting a market where I knew the animals were being bought to be killed, so didn't go there. We walked a few blocks and eventually came to a nice little Eco restaurant that was selling breakfast, so I ordered some pancakes with jugo, and John ordered a continental breakfast with cafe. It was a nice place and they were also selling Eco friendly coffee, bags from Ecuador, freshly handmade soaps, and arts and crafts. When the food came, it was quite nice, although the pancakes they serve over here are not really like the ones you get in England as they are really thick and don't really taste of batter, all the same, they tasted good . John enjoyed his breakfast too. Once we'd finished, we went off in search of the market. 

We soon came to lots of market stalls around the Plaza de Ponchos selling local arts and handicrafts from weavings, jewelry, clothes, wood and stone carvings, paintings, Panama hats, and some products from neighbouring Peru and Colombia. There is also a leather market which is on a Sunday and further out of the main town centre, so we weren't sure we'd go there. We walked around some of the stalls, but most of them seemed to be selling the same kind of things. I did come across one stall that I found a nice alpaca hoodie/jumper and the lady at the stall told me to try it on, so I did. I really liked it actually, and John took a picture of me wearing it. I should have asked a price and tried to barter it, but as I didn't have any space in my backpack, I couldn't buy it anyway, so didn't bother. I will probably see more of them when I get down to Peru anyway. It would be good to have one of these for when I trek the inca trail to keep me warm at night. We carried on walking around the market and came to many stalls selling local street food, and some were also selling a pigs head for a hog roast, there were also stalls selling lots of fruits and vegetables and seeds and pulses. We ended up buying some of the local fruits to try. Further around the market were some different stalls, lots of them were selling walking shoes and hiking boots . We scanned through the stalls to see if I could see any walking boots to replace the ones that I lost. As after Colombia, I'd pretty much given up hope of finding any boots that I liked. Eventually after trawling through all the shoe stalls, I came to find a pair of boots that I liked, so I asked them if I could try them on. I am a size 5 boot, and they only had a size 6, and they were a little big, but I had just tried them on without socks on, so I would have to go back to get my socks so I could try them on properly to see of they would fit. I said I'll come back later with my socks and make a decision then. 

After we'd had enough of window shopping round the market, yes window shopping as we didn't buy anything, we decided to go and find somewhere to have something to eat. We managed to find a restaurant that was upstairs so went up to see what it was like, it had nice views looking out over the volcano's and the market, so we ate there. It was quite pricey for Ecuador, well probably because John decided to have a T-bone steak, but all the same, it was quite nice food . Afterwards we left the restaurant and went back to the hostel as we were still tired from the long journey getting to Ecuador from Colombia yesterday. 

Cuicocha Crater Lake 

Waking up fully refreshed the next morning, I had been thinking about getting the boots, so we went back to the market so I could try them on. I was going to need them today of all days, as we decided to take a hike to Cuicocha crater lake, which is a crater around an extinct volcano near the town of Cotacachi, just outside Otavalo. We walked back to the market and the stall, this time I brought my socks with me and tried on the boots, they were a little big still, but it's best to get them too big than too small right? So I just thought I need some and they were a reasonable price, so I had to have them. Once the boots were sorted, we waked back to the hostel to fit them on properly and then we walked back down to the bus terminal to take a bus to Cotacachi . Once we were on the bus, they come and collect the fees from you, and they collected all of 0.50$ in total so only 0.25$ each. I'm loving the bus travel in and around Ecuador as it's so cheap compared to Colombia. It was about a 20 minute bus journey, so that was around the correct price as it's around 1$ per hour of travel through Ecuador. 

We got the bus to the nearest stop to Cuicocha as you can't get a bus directly to the crater lake. Once you get off the bus at Cuicocha, you need to take a taxi to the crater lake, which is around $5 each way. It was quite a drive from the bus stop so it's best to take a taxi, as it may not be as easy to find walking there yourself. When we got there, there is an office where the guards stop you to ask where you are from and what our names are, so we had to fill them in before we could enter the site. It was free to get in, so we were just going to walk for how ever long we wanted to. The crater lake is similar to the Quilota Crater Lake in Ecuador which we were going to do as well, but now as we're doing this one instead, I don't think we'll bother with Quilota .  

Once the taxi driver dropped us off we were free to walk around the crater lake. There were no obvious signs or directions straight away, so we wandered into the information centre to check. There was a map, and we asked the person working there who pointed us in the right direction. Once we knew where we were heading, we set off on the hike around the crater lake. The scenery from the bottom was stunning, and we were going to be waking uphill around the crater. I doubt that we will walk around the whole thing today, but we'll keep walking until we get tired or until the weather closes in on us. Looking at the scenery at this crater lake, I prefer it to Quilota, well, from what I can see online as we haven't actually been there. Whilst walking up the steps we came to several sacrificial sites along the trail as this place used to be used for sacrifice years ago. We carried on walking around the crater, and the higher up we were going, the better the scenery was becoming, and of course I was snapping many pictures of our hike . As this place is at quite high altitude, you could really feel less oxygen in the air whilst breathing, and because of my asthma, it made it more difficult for me to do the trek, but we soldiered on as far as I could go. We were determined to make it to the highest point of the crater, even if we were not going to make it all the way around. There was a sign near the bottom, and it states that to walk around the whole crater takes around 5 1/2 hours. As we got there about 12pm, we didn't think we'd have time to make it all the way around, so just settling to reach the top was going to be my achievement. 

About 2 hours later, we reached the top of the crater and we stopped to have some lunch and admire the views, we just sat on a bench and had time to take in our surroundings. It was lovely weather at this point and we were debating whether we wanted to continue with the whole trek, but we decided to walk around the corner to see what was there, then we'd probably turn back to come down the same way that we came . We were about half way round the crater when we turned the corner, but when there, we saw some very dark grey clouds descending upon the lake. You could see the mist dissipating down and around the mountains, and it was heading our way, so we thought we'd turn back, just in case we got stuck in a storm and couldn't get back down safely due to visibility. Luckily, it wasn't raining, but the mist was sweeping down and the air became a lot cooler. It took us about an hour to walk back, but we got back down safely, so that was our priority. Once at the bottom, there was one taxi waiting, so we got it back to the bus stop, and then hopped on the bus to go back to the hostel. That evening, we tried to go to a restaurant that John had looked up, but with our luck of finding restaurants, when we got there, it was all locked up. It was pouring with rain, and no other restaurants were open, so the only place that we saw open was a kebab shop. This one had some indoor seats, so we ordered a combo platter each and sat in there. Surprisingly, the food was actually quite good and really cheap. We ran back to the hostel afterwards as it was still raining. We needed to pack up all of our stuff, as we were checking out the next day, ready to travel to Quito.