Saturdays in Otavalo are market days. It's a scene. But since we had already been down there a few times (and didn’t need to encourage any more souvenir requests from our children), we opted to explore a few other sights around town. We would definitely be breaking our one-activity-per-day rule, but it was our last day in Otavalo and we wanted to make the most of it.
As we were getting ready to leave for the day, we were unable to find Mimi. But that was nothing new. She had become the little mayoress of Hostal Curinan, and was known to hang out in the office greeting new guests with Jose and Matilde. In fact, when we were looking for Mimi a few days earlier, I asked Jose if he had seen her. He replied matter of factly, “Mimi? She’s in the office. She’s always in the office.” And that’s exactly where we had found her this time, getting her hair braided by Matilde as the two of them chatted like schoolmates. Neither of them understanding each other’s language particularly well, nor seeming to mind. It's going to be hard to part these two when we leave tomorrow.
Our first stop was the local animal market (the same one that Lucia had tried to sell a pig at the week before). Whereas the main market is heavily geared towards tourists, the animal market was decidedly the opposite. I mean, what could a tourist possibly do with a possibly dead chicken or a very much alive alpaca?
Of course, that didn't stop Mimi from making a fairly convincing case to bring a rabbit home.
From there, we headed up (way up) to the foothills of the mountain range encircling Otavalo. The drive itself, while slightly nausea inducing, was nearly worth it on its own. It meandered through a hillside farming community and provided a stunning overlook of the nearby Lago San Pablo.
Our ultimate destination on that drive was an expansive nature preserve advertised as a Condor Park. It was, but that's selling it short. It's also a stunning cliffside overlook, a reasonably comprehensive aviary showcasing several local birds of prey, and also a window back into time. The park staff take rescued birds, large and small, and nurse them back to health as part of a traditional cultural practice with roots going back nearly 5,000 years. The birds are sent sailing over the city, always coming back. It’s completely under-sold, and was a very impressive operation.
Another family wandering around the park that day was from Eastern Oregon (originally Tanzania) with kids about the same age as ours. It was nice to chat with them a bit as our kids played together after the bird show (these kids know no strangers). Despite the parents appearing to be only a bit older than us, their work (something having to do with exotic snakes, they didn’t exactly go into detail) had allowed them to be within a year or so of retiring. They were in Ecuador that summer to scout it out as a potential destination. No one in the family spoke any Spanish yet, but they weren’t going to let that stop them. And we couldn’t blame them. There was a reason that nearly every foreigner we met in Otavalo had either retired there or was thinking about it. We were among the very few short-term visitors (although that was partly because the minimal but very visible drug violence in other parts of the country kept a lot of people away).
We swung by the main market on our way back. Quinn had his eye on a hand-carved wooden excavator he had seen a week earlier. We told him to think on it at the time, since we were going to keep non-wearable souvenirs to a minimum. He did, and to no one's surprise, he remained pretty focused on adding to his truck collection. But when we went back a few other times during the week, we hadn’t been able to find that artisan again. Quinn was sad, but surprisingly understanding for a 5 year old. So we figured we'd take another stab at it, and pass through for one last look when the market was in full swing.
We ended up finding the artisan, but the excavator wasn’t out on his table anymore. Oh boy. Parenting. But Quinn demonstrated a reasonable amount of maturity, especially given his love for all things trucks. And in a positive reinforcement win for the ages, when the artisan heard us talking about how cool the excavator had been (as opposed to us having to stave off a meltdown), he told us that he had a finished one back at his workshop! After talking details with the artisan and then taking some much needed quiet time at the hostel, we returned again before dinner to reconnect boy and truck. It barely lasted 5 minutes before a big drop knocked off the wooden exhaust pipe, but Quinn didn’t care. He was in love.
Dinner that night was in a restaurant overlooking the market that we hadn’t seen earlier in the week. Quinn had actually discovered it when he noticed the first letters of his name mirrored those of the restaurant (Quinde, which I'm now realizing you can see in the top left corner of the photo above). It provided a stellar view over the market, and a charming end to our time in Otavalo.
Our taxi home that night was flagged by our children as they walked out of the restaurant. Mimi and Quinn, ever the small town kids, couldn’t get enough of just putting out their hand and having car stop for us. On more than one occasion, I had to apologetically wave off cabs overzealously flagged by our children when we were steps away from our destination. But by the end of the week, they were getting the hang of it.
I put my seatbelt on as we rolled away from the restaurant, pleasantly surprised that this cab had functioning ones for all of us. But just as we turned the corner and passed a police checkpoint, our driver reached over and released the buckle on mine.
“There. That’s better.” He said. “Thanks for doing that.” This country is still clearly getting used to its traffic safety reforms. Our driver, making sure that our last night in Otavalo wasn’t too idyllic, presumed I had just put my seat on so he didn’t get a ticket. Nope. Mostly because I didn’t want to die. Tomato, tomato.
But perhaps the nicest part of the evening was that we had been out all afternoon, and Aimee didn’t have to abruptly excuse herself even once. She was finally turning the corner! Which was good, because we had a 5 hour bus ride the next day.
