Day Trip to Otavalo

On Saturday, we headed out of the city for a day trip to Otavalo, which is a well known local crafts market. It was a long and beautiful drive through the Andes. I have never been afraid of flying or heights in my life, but there were some moments on the bus when I had to close my eyes. The roads are narrow and windy and  just wrap around the side of the mountains. Sitting on a bus, it felt like we could go over a cliff at any moment.

Anyway, the market was HUGE with thousands of vendors very cool and we got some nice things. We also stopped at a few other places including the equatorial line, Mitad Del Mundo, and straddled the earth. Throughout the day we got to see llamas, alpacas, cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, horses, guinea pigs, peacocks, and lots and lots of dogs!! Overall, it was a great day! Enjoy some photos below. (of course, Spencer wanted me take some inappropriate pictures of him and the massive equator line but I figured I'd veto him and post the following)

Photos from the drive, beautiful:

   

   

Photos from the Middle of the World:

 

 

Photos from Otavalo:

  

 

 

Having a drink with our new friend Graham overlooking the Market.

After the market we stopped for lunch in a nice resort style place that had peacocks!!!

  

At an overlook we got a chance to take a photo with some highland people and an alpaca and a llama.  The alpaca was super soft, but wanted to lie down right when we got there.

 

 

Spencer got a cool new hat in a little town called Cotacacchi.

This was the last of the school organized new teacher orientation trips, so it may be a while before we have some more fun pics to post.  The apartment is coming along, hopefully I'll take some pictures of that next week for anyone who is interested in our digs.