Advertisement
Published: August 8th 2007
Edit Blog Post
After Ibarra we headed a few hours south to Octavalo which is famous for being one of the best markets in South America, selling lots of goods from woolen Ponchos, blankets, jumpers to crafts, paintings and jewelry . Michelle was looking forward to it!
The main day of the market is Saturday and we arrived a few days early to make sure we got a room as they get very busy the day before. We stayed in a very nice hotel, Riviera Sucre which had very hot showers which we were glad for as it was a bit cold and no surprising seems we were at 2550 meters above sea level! Being so high for the first night I struggle to sleep as my body adjusts to the altitude, for some reason my brain just doesn’t shut off and I only get a few hours sleep if I am lucky. In my mind that doesn’t work out as if your body is trying to cope with less oxygen you think all it would want to do is sleep!!
During the week there is a small market in the main square and then on the Saturday all the streets leading
to the square come alive with hundreds of different stalls. We decided to do a bit of homework and went around the small market pricing things up to be prepared for some heavy haggling come market day. We promised ourselves that we wouldn’t buy anything and save it all for the main day a few hours later and arms full with bags it looked like we failed!
We couldn’t believe how cheap things were (see pictures). For example Michelle bought a throw made out of lamb’s wool. The first stall we went to the guy wanted 6 pounds which we thought was a good deal but knew that if he stared at that price then we can get it cheaper. We carried on walking around and the prices were getting lower without even haggling the same throw went down to 4 pounds. We went back to the stall with the cheapest price and than started to haggle which Michelle is not keen on but I love it! We managed to get it for 2 pounds and couldn’t believe how cheap things were, even cheaper than Asia and that is saying something. Sometimes you do feel guilty haggling over a
few pence but I always say that they wouldn’t sell it at a loss so that sort of makes me feel better and if I just paid what they asked like a lot of people do, before long the price will be very high and you wouldn’t feel like you were getting a bargain and you wouldn’t bother coming to the market in the first place! Even with the prices I paid I am sure you could get them even cheaper as a few sales were a bit to quick for my liking as they settled on the price I wanted to pay and once they agree to your price I would feel dishonorable by pulling out or a like cheap tourist!
Due to us buying so much the day before, when it came to the day of the market we only shopped for certain things that made it a lot easier. I did notice it was harder to haggle if there were also other customers at the stall as they didn’t want to go too low in case the other customers were paying over the amount you were asking. It was all very hush hush and you could
see all the tourists looking at each other to work out how much you were paying for the same thing, pretty funny! We did see some people pay ridiculous prices like 5 times the amount. Example we seen two American ladies haggling over a picture for 20 pounds, and the guy said 2 for 30 so they snapped it up thinking they had a deal, After they went I bought a similar picture for 6 pounds, the guy didn’t even start at 20, he looked me up and down and started at 15, I must of looked poorer than the two ladies which he was right! We were glad we shopped the day before as it would have been too overwhelming if we left on the day as there was just too much choice it was difficult to make up your mind. The best thing we bought were wool long johns for each other as we will need them for Chile and Argentina!
In total we paid 26.50 pounds and we got :-
Llama wool throw - 2 Pounds
2 Llama wool scarfs - 3
3 cotton scarves - 2
2 wool long john - 5
socks -
1
bag - 2
gloves - 1
slippers - 1.50
picture - 6
Rock Carving - 3 (definitely got ripped of on that one, but Michelle really liked it!)
Even after buying the above we were still in are daily budget, result!
We could have bought so much more but have to be careful of the space or lack of it in our rucksacks! It would have been a nice place to finish are trip as then wouldn’t have to worry about carrying it!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.135s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 21; qc: 100; dbt: 0.0887s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb