A Jesuit-Educated Cascadian in St. George's College: Otavalo

Again, I must acknowledge that too much time has passed since my last entry. We just returned from Baños, which just might have been the most exhilarating weekend of my life. But first, I need to add an entry about last weekend's Saturday excursion to Otavalo.

Saturday, 6 August 2011

Otavalo is most famous for its open air markets. These markets are regularly open on Saturdays, and the locals wear traditional clothes while selling a variety of interesting products. The first of the two markets we saw was the animal market. This was a pretty fascinating experience. It was not a meat market; it was a live animal market, full of interesting sights, sounds, and smells. Probably, the most dominant sound was that of squealing pigs. It seemed that the pigs, unlike the other animals at the market, had not accepted their fate of being bought, sold and eaten by superior beings. There were a few pigs that were too rambunctious for the children responsible for them, running around and giving their owners copious amounts of trouble. The most notable pig sold at this market was the guinea pig. The guinea pig, known here as cuy, has been eaten for centuries by the peoples of the Andes mountains. At the market in Otavalo, we saw many people, a good percentage of which were small children, carrying mesh sacks filled with live cuyes. When the time came, a cuy would be brought out of the sack, haggled over, and passed on to its new owner. Apart from being the most adorable food you'll ever eat, cuy is also high in protein and low in fat and cholesterol. It is also very popular among locals for the fact that it is easy to raise in an urban or rural environment. Because none of us particularly wanted to bring home a live animal as a souvenir, we moved on to spend most of our time at the clothes, crafts, art, fruit, and pretty much everything else market. There, I bought a cheap Quena, which I will explain greater detail in a another entry.

After our time at the markets, we hiked up to the Peguche Waterfall. There were a couple bridges where one could get really close and feel the spray, but the real treat came when we hiked up to the top of the waterfall. The waterfall flows out of a small cave where the water isn't too dangerous. To get back into the cave, we crawled on our hands trough a small tunnel that led to a ledge where we could remove our shoes and prepare to enter the water. Once in the water, we walked back no more that forty feet to another waterfall pouring into the cave. At the time, this was the most intimate I had been with a waterfall. For more Alex-waterfall bonding moments, wait for the entry on Baños.

Finally, still wet from the waterfall, we continued on to a El Parque Condor to view rare birds of prey. We arrived just in time for a presentation in an auditorium designed like a Greek theater. The whole park was on top of a hill overlooking an expansive valley, which was the backdrop for the the presentation. The presenter, whom I believe preferred to be called Lord of the Wings, could release the birds to fly out over the valley and return back to his mighty hand. One of the two eagles we saw definitely stayed out long enough that many of us though he wasn't coming back. Eventually he did, and we were all able to breathe easy. The finale involved allowing members of the audience to hold some of the smaller falcons, which Steve made sure to participate in. After that, we packed up the van and returned back to Quito just in time for dinner.