Flavia & Gregory go LA

Hello all it's me again Gregory. Due to popular demand and Flavia’s writers cramp. I will update the blogger for us.

Otavalo - a wonderful town with nice people where the partying / celebrating does not seem to stop. The first night the bus drivers formed a convoy and were driving through town honking their horns till the early morn. Then there was the yamor festival, which was a real big deal, a kind of small scale carnival procession with all the local pretty girls from all the villages on floats, indigenous dancers and dances, military bands and of course the local dignitaries parading to the crowd. The street cleaners then had a couple of minutes to clean all the streets before the
Otavalo market starts.

Otavalo market is the biggest market in South America which is actually 4 markets spaced out in the town. The market consists of: the big animal market (cattle), the little animal market(guinea pigs, cats, chickens etc), the artesian market & the fruit market. Flavia and I decided to miss the animals this time because we went to another big animal market in Saquisilli earlier. So we headed for fruit and art.
Flavia being in her element visited every stall with great interest and surprisingly after 4 hours we managed to spend very little money. I did manage to get us to a restaurant, since I was as hungry as a wild animal and we had a complete 3 course meal for $3. I then managed to slip away to the Runa Tupari agency , who happened to be sporting a wireless router that I could get a free signal off to get onto the internet with my palm, while Flavia managed to buy a few more chains and hats she does not need to post back to the UK.

After the market Flavia had arranged with the agency for us to visit another indigenous family. I was not really looking forward to it. I expected it to be high altitude, freezing cold, no real facilities for housing guests and if the weather was particularly unfriendly then a pretty miserable time to be had. (We had done this thrice before) and I was happy I filled my belly since I did not know when I would get adequate nutrition again. To my surprise this family we spent the time with was the complete opposite and it was the best and most up to date we visited.
Enough of me………………Here are the photos minus the pretty girls on floats, flavia said.

the hat masks

men with long hair discussing how much to charge Flavia for hats

aaaH!!!!! aren't they cute

Corny in the maize

Flavia taking a sneaky Pic

Nice!!! but luckily these break in transit to the UK

These do not break so bought some

The guy in the mask formely known as G**G**Y

Otavalo family house

Volcan Imbabura in the background. Foreground corn drying before the dog ate it all

Mercedes feeding her pig who saved her own bacon in the nick of time by becoming pregnant