Jelly doughnut time….for real

Day 2 began with a breakfast with our host family and then heading to the market. The market in Otavalo is the largest indigenous market in South America and we were all ready to do some haggling. Upon reaching the market I broke off from the group a little bit so I could do some investigating. I spent my first half of an hour just asking prices and then battering to find out the true price. Side note: when dealing with money/if you suggest an extremely low price, Ecuadorians begin talking much loader and faster at you. Not discouraged I haggled my way down to roughly half the price that was originally offered and got to practice some Spanish along the way. I got some absolutely beautiful stuff, including an addition to my hat and cane collection. There was one funny point were I got so into the “haggling game” that my friend Bill had to pull me away from the vendor! (she tried to sell me a shirt for 3 times the starting price of other vendors!) All in all the thing that I will remember the most from the market is not the price of any item, but the talent that many of these vendors had to create such colorful and intricate products.
After the market the group had lunch at the most expensive hotel in the city ($200 per night per person…and here that is an unreal amount of money). While our meal was being prepared I took the liberty to take a short nap on one of the hammocks they had set up out back. The back of the hotel was a beautiful garden including a gorgeous view of the farmlands close to Otavalo. After being coerced out of the hammock I received an amazing pork meal followed by some ice cream made in the shop down the street. Now it was time to head back to our families for our last night there.
On the bus ride to our house I found out that two other guys lived a few dirt roads away. After explaining to them where our house was we decided that it would be a good idea to create a “code word” in case they got lost or didn’t know exactly which house was ours. I suggested “jelly doughnut” and the group of intelligent young minds agreed. Clearly this was the best option and a completely fool-proof plan.
Meeting time: 9pm, my house, in case of emergency- jelly doughnut
Although we returned around 6:30 to our house our dinner wasn´t prepared until 8:30! Right about the time we are finishing our soup and are getting our main dish the dog outside of our house began barking insistently. Brent, Nathan and I knew it was our buddies but tried to ignore it hoping they would see through the window that we were still eating. After about thirty seconds one of the daughters was going to go outside to see what the dark was barking at but the dog stopped barking just in time. Thinking we had dodged the bullet, we were pretty happy. Not two seconds later did the infamous wailing words of “JELLY DOUGHNUT” begin ringing in our ears. In a mixture of complete embarrassment and utter horror Nathan subdued the situation in Spanish while I did everything I could not to laugh uncontrollably. I just wish I could tell you this entire story in person because it’s even better that way!
After dinner we met up with the other guys and made a fire in our room. Four of us decided to go on a late night hike to see if we could climb up this cliff side (at least 100 ft vertical climb..probs 150+ when I saw it the next day). With only a small mag-light and the moon guiding our way the four of us completed a hike down and up a rock face (mostly hiking grabbing things to pull ourselves up) that we probably wouldn’t have attempted if we had seen it in daylight. Fortunately no one got hurt and when we scaled the other side we had a beautiful view looking down on the city of Otavalo. It was the perfect end to a great day.
The next morning on our way back to Quito our bus made an unexpected stop for us. The school had set up a boat ride for us on a lake next to a volcano. The area that the lake is in was formed by one of the eruptions of the volcano and when the glaciers melted the lake was formed. The boat ride was so much fun and I don’t think I will ever get used to being in the middle of mountains and volcanoes. For lack of more descriptive adjectives…it was beautiful. Another successful weekend. Ciao amigos.
Also I apologize for choppy writing…English is hard now…as if I couldn’t tell the difference between nouns and adjectives before! (haha srry aunt carol)