22-24.06.: Otavalo
Lodging: El Geranio, Rocafuerte y Colón, more or less. $10 a room, private bath only because the key to the room without private bath could not be found. Nice place, friendly people, headquarters of a volunteering project, where people pay to teach kids for 2 months. The money goes to stipends for rural kids, so that they can visit the better urban schools. The project just started, so the place is teeming with Americans getting their introductory Spanish lessons. They keep mostly to themselves, though.
The room is interesting: it is (or was, at the time we got there) clean, and comfortable, but a damaged water pipe in the ceiling must have been left to leak for so long that mushrooms grow on the ceiling. No, not mold.
Otavalo is famous for its artesanias market, which is supposed to cover half the city on weekends. During the week, it only fills the Plaza del Ponchos. The selection of clothes, blankets, carpets, jewellery and peculiar stuff like bone knives or small figurines is diverse, much better than in all other places we've visited.
This week, there is the mostly indigenous festival (or collection thereof) known as Los San Juanes, or less catholic, as Rayna Inti (I think). By accident, we met a fellow German, Markus, who also wanted to see the festivities. On Wednesday, the 3 of us went to Peguche, a village right outside of Otavalo. There, from 9 to 12 in the evening, there was music, dancing and a chicken exchange -- a local tradition, also done with fruit; anyone can take as much as he needs, but must give back double the amount the next year.
Luckily for us, we met Mauricio, who lives in Peguche, at the festival. He was wearing a self made mask with two faces, took us in, gave us free booze (there were some people, including us, walking around with half-liter glasses of liquor), and explained some of the rituals to us. (Also luckily, Markus just had come from 6 months of volunteering with KulturWeit in Nicaragua, and speaks passable Spanish, so he could translate.) The music was lively, mostly idigenous sounding stuff, but also some fiddles which reminded me distinctly of colonial American music.
Around 11, Mauricio led us onwards to a waterfall in Peguche, where people have a spiritual (but quite materially cold, let me assure you) bath around midnight. We watched while Mauri and Markus bathed in the ice-cold water (Markus: "I wouldn't be doing this if I weren't so drunk" -- most men and women there weren't drunk, not being such wusses as we are). We then escorted the drunken Markus and the freezing Mauri back to take a cab home.
Thursday we slept in, and had a quiet day, but I ate lots of delicious food from the stalls on the street, especially those set up for the festival. In the evening, the Plaza del Ponchos was filled with people watching dancing groups in costumes and traditional garb. To the music they themselves played -- always the men, by the way, we never once saw a women carrying an instrument -- they danced the same circular polonaise we saw the day before. The only exceptions were a dance troupe performing in front of a raised dais with what I guess were the local magnates. We watched for a couple of hours, again drinking local varieties of liquor -- though far less than the day before. Even though there were quite some stands selling drinks, and we saw people buying them by the bottle (pints of liquor, mind, not beer), the only drunken people we met where a Canadian and an Italian.
Friday:
We waited for the hostel's family to start partying, which didn't happen, so we went back to the Plaza del Ponchos, where the party seemed to be ending. We nevertheless spent a delightful evening drinking beer and watching the rest of the festivities slowly die away with Moritz, a German from jena who had just spent a couple of weeks in Colombia after finishing two trimesters of physics on exchange in Caracas, with whom we of course exchanged travelling tips and stories.
Otavalo is famous for its artesanias market, which is supposed to cover half the city on weekends. During the week, it only fills the Plaza del Ponchos. The selection of clothes, blankets, carpets, jewellery and peculiar stuff like bone knives or small figurines is diverse, much better than in all other places we've visited.
This week, there is the mostly indigenous festival (or collection thereof) known as Los San Juanes, or less catholic, as Rayna Inti (I think). By accident, we met a fellow German, Markus, who also wanted to see the festivities. On Wednesday, the 3 of us went to Peguche, a village right outside of Otavalo. There, from 9 to 12 in the evening, there was music, dancing and a chicken exchange -- a local tradition, also done with fruit; anyone can take as much as he needs, but must give back double the amount the next year.
Luckily for us, we met Mauricio, who lives in Peguche, at the festival. He was wearing a self made mask with two faces, took us in, gave us free booze (there were some people, including us, walking around with half-liter glasses of liquor), and explained some of the rituals to us. (Also luckily, Markus just had come from 6 months of volunteering with KulturWeit in Nicaragua, and speaks passable Spanish, so he could translate.) The music was lively, mostly idigenous sounding stuff, but also some fiddles which reminded me distinctly of colonial American music.
Around 11, Mauricio led us onwards to a waterfall in Peguche, where people have a spiritual (but quite materially cold, let me assure you) bath around midnight. We watched while Mauri and Markus bathed in the ice-cold water (Markus: "I wouldn't be doing this if I weren't so drunk" -- most men and women there weren't drunk, not being such wusses as we are). We then escorted the drunken Markus and the freezing Mauri back to take a cab home.
Thursday we slept in, and had a quiet day, but I ate lots of delicious food from the stalls on the street, especially those set up for the festival. In the evening, the Plaza del Ponchos was filled with people watching dancing groups in costumes and traditional garb. To the music they themselves played -- always the men, by the way, we never once saw a women carrying an instrument -- they danced the same circular polonaise we saw the day before. The only exceptions were a dance troupe performing in front of a raised dais with what I guess were the local magnates. We watched for a couple of hours, again drinking local varieties of liquor -- though far less than the day before. Even though there were quite some stands selling drinks, and we saw people buying them by the bottle (pints of liquor, mind, not beer), the only drunken people we met where a Canadian and an Italian.
Friday:
We waited for the hostel's family to start partying, which didn't happen, so we went back to the Plaza del Ponchos, where the party seemed to be ending. We nevertheless spent a delightful evening drinking beer and watching the rest of the festivities slowly die away with Moritz, a German from jena who had just spent a couple of weeks in Colombia after finishing two trimesters of physics on exchange in Caracas, with whom we of course exchanged travelling tips and stories.
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