Otavalo, Ecuador

Otavalo is a small town in Ecuador about two hours north of Quito. It is most known for its Mercado Artesanal, a huge market where indigenous people come to sell their hand made goods. It is touted as touristy in the guidebooks, but we only ran across a handful of other tourists outside of the Market.

The town itself is an interesting mix of old and new. The indigenous population dress very traditionally. The women wear long skirts, white blouses with wide sleeves and ornate embroidery. Those with infants wrap them in a white blanket and wear them tied onto their backs. Both men and women wear their hair in a long braid or ponytail. Amidst the traditional Otavalenas, there are modern adults and teenagers running around in (likely fake) Hollister and Abercrombie hoodies. It is a very strange sight.

Otavalo is the first place so far that we have really liked. We weren't huge fans of Colombia... the parts we visited were dirty, polluted, expensive, and I felt like I had to clutch onto my purse for dear life. When we stepped off the bus to Otavalo, Daniel and I both breathed a sigh of relief. The pace of life is slower here, and the people are generally very nice. The babies (OMG THE BABIES) are the cutest human beings I have ever laid eyes on. Seriously, if I could take one home with me, I would. We knew that we would like it here right away.

The town is small enough that after a few days, even I (the most directionally challenged person in the world), was able to find my way around. There is a nice square in the middle of town where people hang out and walk around. It had Daniel's heart when he saw the "wifi zona" sign at the entrance. There is also a fruit market every day where we have enjoyed browsing the stalls and people watching. Our hostel overlooks the artisan market, which is bustling from the time we wake up in the morning until they shut down for dinner around seven.

Once the market closes down for the day, several food stalls are set up in the square. Local families come in herds to eat dinner together. The local women sell food and serve it in a plastic bag. It is amazing. Daniel's favorite is the meat on a stick (you can either eat it off the stick or they will put it in a bag for you). It has chicken, beef, chorizo, and some other unidentifiable meat. My favorites are the grilled corn with cheese and the grilled chicken and potatoes. For some reason, none of the guide books mention anything about this, but it appears to happen every day. We just happened to stumble across it on our way back to the hostel one night. Prices range from $0.75 to $1.75, and you will leave full and happy.

On the subject of food, we've taken a liking to the "almuerzo" (set lunch) in Ecuador. Basically, you go into a hole in the wall restaurant and they will serve you an appetizer, main course, and dessert for ridiculously cheap (usually around $2). There is no ordering; whatever they make that day is what you will get. It's a good way to try new things, and since we haven't learned Spanish yet, we usually have no idea what we are ordering anyway. There are been a few hits and a few misses, but I recommend it. Also on the food topic, Daniel has updated our ice cream count. I prefer to stick my head in the sand than admit how much ice cream I actually eat. It has been 100% delicious, though!

You can see more pictures from our time in Otavalo on our flickr

HOWTO: Getting to Ecuador from Colombia

Anyone who knows me know that I am a planner. I don't mean in the sense that I have to know what I am doing every minute of the day, but when it comes to crossing our first border by bus... I wanted to know how to do it. We were about two hours from the border of Ecuador in Pasto, Colombia. We still haven't gotten a good grasp on Spanish, which makes traveling with multiple transfers nerve wracking for me. People coming up to you, shouting at you, and shoo-ing you to their bus, cab, or collectivo is a little terrifying when you have no idea what they are saying or where you might end up if you get it wrong. I searched google, lonely planet, wiki travel, and various forums for a how-to guide when it came to crossing into Ecuador from Pasto, and was met with only dead ends. So I've decided to write my own. It won't be overly witty, but will hopefully help someone else who is as neurotic as I am. After our 20 hour bus ride from Bogota to Pasto, we spent a few nights at the Koala Inn to recoup. Once I had cobbled together a plan, we were ready to take on our first border crossing. The steps are as follows:

Get thee to a supermarket to get some snacks for the ride. My recommendations are oranges, graham crackers, animal crackers, and nuts. (My former coworkers know that my go-to snacks are always "fruit and nuts")

Take a taxi from Koala Inn (or wherever you are staying) to the Terminal de Transportes de Pasto (bus terminal): 3.500 COP

Enter the bus terminal from the main entrance. Take a right and there will be a few bus companies that will take you to Ipiales. We used Supertaxi: 12.000 COP. Note: If you take a left instead of a right once you're in the main entrance, you will go into a long hallway where people from various companies will hang out of their stalls and scream at you as you walk by. I have no idea if they are cheaper or legitimate, but I just tried to avoid it all together.

Take a white collectivo bus or a taxi to customs at Rumichaca. Be sure to tell the driver that you need immigration so they don't send you straight to Ecuador's customs without getting stamped out of Colombia first. We chose to take a taxi (6.000 COP) instead of the collectivo because it was jammed full of people and we had all of our gear with us.

Go inside to get stamped out of Colombia. Walk across the bridge to Ecuador's immigration office and get stamped in.This is the part where we walked past people exchanging currency, one of whom was holding a rubix cube. Daniel immediately asked the man for it, and began to solve it. A crowd of ten or so people gathered around while he worked his nerd magic. When he was able to solve it, the crowd cheered and shook his hand.

Take a collectivo or taxi to Tulcan (again, we chose a taxi; 7.000 COP)

From Tulcan, we got a bus into Otavalo ($6). You could also go to Quito if you were so inclined.

**All prices listed are for 2 people, in COP while in Colombia and in USD in Ecuador.

The Bus to Pasto

Pop quiz: You're a bus driver, driving a large, touring bus full of passengers. You're traversing mountainous terrain with sharp turns, no guardrails, and steep inclines on a two lane road. It is pitch black outside. You approach a slow moving semi, which is actually behind another semi. Do you:

1. Wait for a stretch of straight road on which to pass
2. Wait for the semis to separate and pass them one at a time, waiting for the one immediately in front of you to move the the right as much as possible
3. Wait for a tight turn and begin your pass of BOTH semis immediately after its completion, regardless of the fact that the next tight turn is only 300 feet ahead of you and a similar bus is likely to come barreling around the corner at any moment causing a horrific accident and the abrupt end to the lives of all on board

If you picked C, you're a winner. You get nothing.

We just finished up a 20 hour bus trip from Bogota to Pasto, a town about 1.5 hours from the Colombia/Ecuador border. We're planning to leave Colombia and this was a natural stopping point to rest after the long drive. This isn't about our future plans though, this is about narrow avoidance of death during our 20 hours on the bus.

Traffic in Colombia is… interesting. There are rarely lines on the road, people generally just do as they want, and everyone is seemingly in a constant state of almost getting into an accident. As we left town in our large tour bus, our driver deftly maneuvered in and out of traffic as if he were driving a VW Golf. This was terrifying, but I'd been on worse already and I said to myself, once we get out of the city, onto the open road, all will be well.

Shortly after leaving the city you begin your ascent into the Andean mountains. Our bus had a notice posted that the maximum speed was 80 km/h and had a handy display at the front, visible by all passengers, that indicated the current speed. I can tell you that we quickly learned the display was incapable of showing speeds in excess of 99 km/h, it would just give up and display "Alerta" (I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine the meaning of alerta).

As night fell we continued to encounter lots of traffic and it became clear that we would not idly follow these struggling semis, dump trucks, smaller buses, and cars, no, we would overtake them and leave them in our dust. During our time on the road, we were absolutely the fastest moving vehicle and I slept little during the night as our driver time and again would pass vehicles of all kinds. In fact, we probably spent a full 20% of our time in the left lane that was meant to accommodate oncoming traffic. I counted no less than 4 times that we narrowly avoided head on collision.

The journey was nausea inducing, and after 4 hours Jordan and I donned out motion sickness patches to help settle our stomachs. Jordan, not being able to take it any longer, just went to sleep, leaving me awake, fearing that any moment could be my last. As we settled into a lull between mountains I finally fell asleep, only to wake after several hours with more than 8 hours remaining in our journey.

With daybreak came scenery. The drive was beautiful, the mountains stunning. The driving continued, but we became accustomed to the frenetic pace at which we moved through the countryside narrowly avoiding horses, cows, bikers, and of course, other vehicles. Only after we completed the journey did we read that the portion we covered during the night was not considered safe, with armed bandits holding up any bus dumb enough to stop to take on hitchhikers (which are omnipresent throughout).

Luckily, our bus line was the only one with a policy not to pick up hitchhikers. We did at one point encounter small groups of people on either side of the road with a make shift rope, comprised of of rags, spanning the road. As we approached, they raised the rope, presumably so that we would stop and they could rob us. Our driver continued unabated and they dropped the rope at the last minute. A quarter mile ahead, we passed another such obstruction, again at full speed without any sign of stopping.

We arrived is Pasto without major incident. We stopped several times on the trek to assist broken down busses from the same line, we picked up the passengers from one, and helped get another moving after it had overheated. Upon arrival we checked into our hostel and promptly went to sleep at 3 in the afternoon.

I suspect that this isn't our last encounter with harrowing transportation, but it was our first, and will be one to remember. My apologies for the lack of photos in this post, I was too terrified to take any, to make up for it, make sure you catch the stunning views from Monserrate and the Botero Museum in Bogota.