Otavalo

We arrived in Otavalo on market day. Its a small city of 50,000, folded in a valley between Vulcan Imbabura and Volcan Cotacachi. We found almuerzo (lunch) of chicken and rice and began to explore.

The Plaza de Pancho holds a daily hand crafts market of woven alpaca blankets, knit sweaters, embroidered wall hangings, carved statues, silver jewelry and montecristi, the traditional andean felt hats. On Saturdays it explodes into the surrounding streets, turning the main avenue and adjacent side streets into a pedestrian mall. Food vendors wheel carts with fruit, drinks, meat, beans and roasting plantains. At the fringes of the hand craft market, stalls sell jeans, sweatshirts, brillo pads, cell phones, soccer balls, pots and pans and anything else one might want or need.

Saturday´s volume weaves the hard goods market into the expanded daily market where vendors offer sacks of potatoes, beans, corn and rice, baskets of leeks, onions, tomatoes, grapes, bananas, mangoes, oranges and other fruits whose names and flavors I do not yet know. In the carne aisle sides of beef hang from hooks and pigs heads adorn trays. Women pluck lingering down feathers from whole chickens while they wait to make a sale.Dogs nose the street for scraps. Abuelas with the stature of children carry too-heavy bags. Otavaleñas, the local indigenous women brouse the market in their white embroidered blouses with billowing lace sleaves, long woolen skirts and woven belts, their children strapped to their backs with a cloth.

We wander the maze of stalls and streets, "mirando, solomente mirando", looking only, finding ourselves on the same street corner and turning a new direction. We did pick up some mangoes (five for a dollar) and bananas (five cents each)and some bread to serve as a light supper. We at it on our stoop, watching the clouds that crowned Imbabura and waiting for a glimpse.