Otavalo

Hey all,
It's been crazy busy for a while now, so sorry about not writing in so long!

So the weekend of January 22 and 23rd the whole program took us to a small city called Otavalo which is know for it's absolutely giant market. There, a lot of the native Ecuadorian people sell textiles and things of the like. There is a lot of Alpaca, flutes, and scarves. An interesting (and difficult) part of this trip was having to bargain with everyone. It's not that bargaining is actually difficult, I get the logistics of it. But when someone offers you two dollars for a beautifully hand woven scarf, it's hard to scoff in their face and insist that it's only worth one.

So the first day we were in Otavalo, we all did silly tourist activities in the market like asking the native people to translate certain basic phrases from spanish into Quichwan. It was difficult to say the least. Plus, everyone was really irritable because all we wanted to do was go look at the things in the market, and buy everyone we know and their mother gifts, but they had us doing ridiculous gringo activities all day. Oh well right? hahaha It was still an amazing trip and everyone still bought a ton of gifts there.

after visiting the market, we all went up to this lake that sits in the bowl of a volcanoe. The lake is called Cuicocha, and it is breathtakingly beautiful. After eating lunch at a restaurant overlooking the lake, a portion of the group took a boat tour, and the others (including me) hiked partway around the lake.

The last thing we did before leaving the area that Otavalo is in, is we visited a curandero. A curandero is a healer that specializes in banishing the bad spirits from someone. So, on the way they asked if anyone wanted to volunteer to do this, and my friend Zang volunteered. What ended up happening, was this healer guy ended up spitting a bunch of liqueur onto these leaves, then light hitting Zang all over her body several times with the leaves. Then, he took two eggs, and shook them around her body. This is the most important step, because if you can hear the water in the egg moving around, that means there are bad spirits within the person that need banishing. So, since he could hear the water moving, he decided to chew flowers, then drink a little wine, and spit the concoction all over Zang. Literally all over. Then, he drank more liqueur and spit fireballs at her. All in all, it was a lot of liqueur, all over Zang. Kind of a hilarious end to the weekend for sure.