Ecuador- Otavalo and Quito

After the tedious border crossing, we find the bus station and board the next bus to Otavalo, about 3-4 hours from the border. We get our ticket, and find our seat numbers on the ticket but when we get on the bus there is an old lady sitting in one of our seats. Nevermind, I'm sure nobody will mind if we just take the 2 empty seats behind her. One guy boards the bus, we are in his seat but he doesn't mind, he just takes another seat. Another man gets on, and we are in his seat also, we explain that the lady took our seat and he looks irritated but goes to another seat. He must have been stewing on it, as 5 minutes later he comes up to us again, and not that we understood most of what he said but the general gist of it was that he didn't care if our seat was taken, we had to get out of his seat. He was getting more and more irate, but luckily the rest of the bus was on our side and effectively told him to sit down and shut up, and leave the poor stupid foreigners alone. Thanks guys!

We arrived at about 5pm, and checked in to our accommodation, a pretty decent room with views of the town and surrounding mountains- not bad for $15 a night. We had changed up about $30 USD from our remaining pesos at the border, but otherwise had a pile of $100 bills, which I had been saving from my last Cambodian wage. We tried to pay for the room with one, to which we were told they could not accept $100's. When we asked if we needed to go to a bank to change them to smaller notes, the guy in the hotel told us no, banks would not do it, but a petrol station might. We did a bit of research later and discovered that about 99.9% of places will not take $100 notes (Turns out only one type of bank will do it). Slightly annoying to be carrying around USD and have to take out more as we cannot spend it.

Otavalo

Jonno loves the pretty doorway

One seriously fat dog

Otavalo is famous for its Artisanal market, the biggest of which is held on a Saturday, but the second biggest is on a Wednesday, and luckily for us that was the following day. We decided to visit a nearby waterfall first, and leave the market until the afternoon. The market was interesting to look around, a lot of ponchos and things made with llama wool, but most of the stalls sold much the same, so after about 30 minutes we got bored and wandered out. There was another walk up into the mountains which we decided to go for, and allowed us to see some of the beautiful scenery around Otavalo. It was a steep walk, but was worth it for the views!

Woman in traditional dress

Peguche Waterfall

Definitely could have worse views

El Lechero- the tree is believed to house the soul of a cursed lover who fell for a man in a rival family.

Later that evening, we went to search for dinner. We found somewhere that had the cheap 'menu of the day' option, and were a little confused to find that alongside the standard soup starter, we were given a bowl of popcorn, and after the main dish of some part of an animal we were not quite sure of but wasn't too appealing, they gave us a lovely dessert of 2 small Ritz crackers, with a pea sized amount of jam in the middle. We didn't realise we were in such a posh establishment! We were also given a fruit drink babaco, and when we tried to look up the name of the fruit, the closest it gave us was baba, with the following translations;
a Saliva (of an adult)/slobber (of an animal)
b Snail mucus
c A small crocodile
Hmm…probably not quite right.

Quito from Itchimbia park

The following day we got a 2 hour bus to Quito, the capital city of Ecuador. At 2,850 metres above sea level, it is the highest constitutional capital in the world. It's old town also is the best preserved in Latin America. We had been warned to be wary of our belongings in Quito, but it generally had a nice feel about it. The people seemed to be friendly, and we also discovered that they love a party bus- A flashy bus with no seats and loud music pumping out, which every so often the people on the bus would get out, have a dance off on the streets, then all pile back into the bus and continue to dance while the bus drove around.

Party bus! 

As our tablet had given up on us and decided to not turn on, we thought we probably had no choice but to buy a new tablet or laptop, and Quito would probably be the best chance to find one. We found a few places, but because of the high tax Ecuador imposes, they were at least double the price as we would pay in the UK. There was one last thing Jonno wanted to check about the broken tablet- but needed a multimeter for this. We managed to find an electronic repair shop which confirmed that it was the charging cable which was broken, and after leaving it with them for a day they managed to fix it- saving us a lot of money (we had gone through 4 laptops in our last travels, we don’t have a good track record). We also managed to get Jonnos walking boots repaired for $4, success!

Quito street art

We spent quite a while walking around Quito, discovering a nice park with views of the city, and a very fancy church which we were able to climb up ladders to get to the top for another nice city view, although it didn’t quite feel right scaling a church! We also did another walking tour here, which took us into a massive fruit and flower market- Ecuador is the biggest exporter of roses in the world and they are very cheap to buy in the country. Jonno still didn’t get the hint…

Walking along a plank on the roof of the church..

..and up some ladders to the top

View from the top

Beautiful stained glass

Fruits at the market

Restaurants and shops in the central plaza with Spanish influence

Quito is also an hour bus ride from the Equator line, so we thought we would go and spend some time hopping between the north and south equator. When we had looked it up, we discovered that the main equator attraction site is where the original equator line was thought to be, but was later discovered by GPS to be 250 metres from the original site. The first equator line is the big tourist attraction site, with fancy monuments, but if you walk further down the road and down a dirt track you can find the actual equator with a more humble museum and a tour explaining about the history and culture of the local area as well as learning about the equator. After a very gimmicky introduction, where a staff member dressed in hairy trousers and an adapted tea cosy mask dragged us all up to dance, we were taken around to various displays. One had some taxidermied animals from the Amazon, including a 5 metre anaconda hanging from the ceiling. The next display showed the customs and culture of the indigenous people of the Amazon- including the tribe who practiced the custom of shrinking heads- removing the skull from a persons head and boiling the head to the size of a fist. If the person was well respected or a family member, the community would wear the shrunken head around their neck. Niiiice. There are still 2 types of indigenous community still in the Amazon in Ecuador- one has made contact with the outside world but one has not and we were told would probably kill anyone who came across them.

Scary hairy dancer

'The penis fish'- swims up your penis and lives in your bladder if you pee in the river they live in

My anaconda don't want none unless you got buns hun

Beautiful shrunken head

Another part of the tour was showing us the actual equator line, and the amazing effect it has on physics. The equator is the easiest place to balance an egg on the head of a nail (we both tried and succeeded!), your strength is less on the equator line compared to even 2 metres off it due to having the least gravity, and its almost impossible to walk in a straight line with your eyes closed along the line because the centrifugal forces affect your balance. Crazy.
With all this fascinating information and evidence this was definitely the equator line, Jonno still wasn't happy as his phone GPS did not say Latitude 00°00'00'. Even though his phone was clearly lying, we still had to walk further down the road to make his phone happy, apparently.

Smiling on the outside but doubt on the inside, if the phone doesn't say so...

The perfect place to balance an egg on a nail, a vital skill in life

Various types of totem

Quito was a nice place to explore for a couple of days but we were ready for some nature time, so onto the next place, Mindo.

Street art in Otavalo