Otavalo

It´s Saturday the 5th January and I am typing this in an internet cafe in Otavalo north of Quito. This post will be a bit jumbled up because this is the first time I have had access to the internet in a few days and it will be a mixture of stuff I have saved from my computer and stuff I am typing now. Sorry if the flow does not make sense. I still havn´t got the hang of posting photos where I want them either so I think they are all in the wrong order. Dealing with posting instructions in Spanish isn´t helping either and I can´t seem to get it to change to English. Anyway we´re basically having a great time and heaps of stuff has been happening so I´ll get on with it.

Edit: After posting I realised that the photos were all over the place so I am going to do them in a seperate post with just photos.

Today we have spent the day trawling the massive Otavalo markets.
Early this morning before the main markets were open we went to the animal markets for a bit of authentic Equadorian farming experience. There was definately no NLIS procedures in place here. The markets consisted of a whole lot of people with individual goats, sheep, pigs, cattle and horses who stood around in a clearing on the side of a hill while buyers came and inspected the animals and negotiated a price. Each animal was led by a piece of rope and once bought they were dragged off to the back of a ute or simply walked home.
After breakfast we spent virtually the rest of the day at the main markets which were dominated by Ecuadorian handicrafts such as alpaca wool jumpers, scarves, rugs, silver jewellery all cheap and all up for negotiation for an even cheaper price. Ally was in seventh heaven and we all ended up buying at least a couple of things. Rhiannon bought a traditonal Ecuadorian costume shirt and wore it around which resulted in all the old ladies pulling her up and carrying on we think along the lines of how cute she looked.
It really was the most colourfull and vibrant markets with most of the indigenous people still wearing traditional dress. Tonight we are ging to an indiginous village for a dinner and some sort of show. Not sure whats involved but apparently dressing up is on the cards.