Arriving here was like coming from dark into light. It had been raining when Fredy, our taxi driver carried our luggage into the windowless room in Latacunga the night before last. The Quilatoa crater lake had been magical that day. By contrast the streets in this new city were wet, narrow, dark and dreary -- the buildings missing whatever paint they might have had years earlier. It was a city completely without grace and we couldn't wait to check out yesterday morning.
All the main street lamp standards are beautiful.
This city, though, is shockingly gorgeous by Ecuadorian standards. The streets are wide and bright, the buildings freshly painted, the stores stocked with merchandise and the streets safe (so far).
Market wares.
Otavalo is an indigenous city surrounded by the peaks of four volcanoes and famous for its enormous Saturday market. I asked, Antonio, the chef of the next door restaurant (delicately because he himself is indigenous) how the native people here had become so wealthy when many we've seen so far barely have clothes to cover their backs.
"Many years ago some of us travelled to Europe to market our wares. We saw how others lived and returned here with big ideas for change," he said. I remembered reading that Otavalo had been an Andean crossroads since pre-Inca times, when jungle traders would come here on foot.
So I suppose that somehow, hundreds of years ago people began to develop a business savvy. Now Otavaleños receive international recognition for their weaving and craftsmanship. They own hotels and restaurants. Many drive Ford Rangers. Even so, for years they were exploited, first by colonialists and then by Ecuadorian landowners.
It was only in 1964 with the Agrarian Reform that native peoples could own land. Still there are many in the country who have a meagre existence because their handicrafts have to pass through middlemen to get to market.
The owners of this store parked their truck right in the store.
The woman who sold me an iPad cover today.
The owner of these goats had been walking around town with a cup selling fresh, really fresh goat's milk. He had just tied them up.
A woman with a big load.
No snowmen made from bicycle tires here.
Indigenous women wear smart black dresses and no hats.
Odd cactus.
Complicated wiring.
Tomorrow we're taking a train on a mountainous track from Ibarra, at the foot of the Imbabura Volcano, to Salinas where salt is mined.
Chao.
Great iPad pics hermana! So sorry about your camera - and phone! This was a letting-go trip - a gift from the gods.
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