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Published: August 14th 2008
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Chess Anyone?
It's The Spanish Vs. The Inca's. I think I know how this ends up. Apparently, over packing is a secondary disorder, brought on by compulsive shopping. My name is Lisa and I am a chronic shopaholic. It doesn't even have to be for me. Heck, I even get stuff for my friends, family, and staff all resulting in me lugging around stuff for my six weeks. The trick was in avoiding paying any overweight luggage fees when we were limited to 20 kilos total for the whole 6 weeks and we started with more than that! for those of you dying to know, we never paid excess or any luggage fees.
This brings me to Otavalo. One of the best markets in South America. Now, having just been in Peru didn't hurt because much of what we saw was from there (think Pachemama earrings) but also knowing that made us very able to see what was really from Ecuador and what was not. Unfortunately, I missed the animal market (which I am sure would have elevated it to Lisa's Top 10 Markets List) but got to spend better part of the day looking at the crafts. Ecuador in comparison to Peru is also much more expensive courtesy of the USD. The same thing in
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I don't think the armadillo this came from thought life would turn out this way. Peru was priced at almost twice that amount in Ecuador.
Ecuador is an interesting place. I was thinking Peru was worse for crime but then I attempted to walk into a bank to change some travelers checks to be met by a nice gentleman with a sawed off shotgun pointed at me wanting to know what I wanted at the bank. Hmm, looking for money rings a bell but I didn't exactly think it was in my best interest to smart off with him, so I demurely answered him that I would like to cash in some traveler's checks. He informes me that I can't do that at this bank and points me down the way to a money changing house. In the mean time, I am beginning to wonder and ask myself, (in my tank top and panama hat), if I look like a bank robber or some nefarious character? I finally find a change house who will accept traveler's checks and I have to say, I have been a lot of places where I have felt unsafe, this took the cake. My guide nervously stood watch at the door where inside this room another young man with
another sawed off (they must export them to Compton or something), watched Eric and I transact our business with a lady in a bulletproof room. A nice little sign proclaimed in pictographs no guns, like duh, it is essentially a bank. Now, it could completely be my imagination and I could be paranoid but I am not thinking so, it seems that there must be at least a little problem with robbery. I mean the nice greeter at Bank of America doesn't have a sawed off shotgun. This was very different than say Asia, where you could change hundreds of dollars in front of everyone outside on a busy street and feel moderately safe. Hey, at least it made me pay attention. In the end, I got my shopping fix, no harm, no foul.
On our way to Otavalo we stopped at a monument for the equator. We elected to forgo the Disney-like monument to the north of Quito. Apparently there is some disagreement as to where the actual equator is. Some say it's one place and GPS says it's somewhere a little ways down the road. Either way, my husband, man of science who he is, just wants
to know, which way the toilets flush. For him, it all comes down to that!
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