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Published: March 18th 2012
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Thursday 8th March - Otavalo
A good nights sleep and we were ready for our 1st inclusive breakfast for a while which even included table service. 3 blocks from our hostal and we were at the central market which the town is famous for and regarded as being the largest of its kind in South America when it's at full strength each saturday. For the rest of the week it's a scaled down version which is probably better for buyers as it's much quieter and therefore the sellers are a little more negotiable. It wasn't long before Stacie had made her 1st purchase, a lovely pair of alpaca ponchos for the bargain basement price of 8 dollars each after some hard negotiating. Similar ones in the UK would fetch at least 100 pounds each. The cash register in my head started ticking over as I thought about buying up everyone I could find and sending them back to the UK but this was quickly dispelled after finding out it costs 100 dollars to post 5kg and that the chances of my goods arriving safely were not great. Not long later and we found a great little pizzeria offering a large
slice of pepperoni which was fantastic and a bottle of coke for just 1 dollar. Amazing value indeed and probably the cheapest place we'd been since Guatemala.
Friday 9th March - Otavalo
Breakfast again and we were sat next to the first english person we'd met in a while which was nice to begin with but quickly evaporated on realising he was a complete chumpo crackhead with a rude french girlfriend. On finding out he worked in IT and telling him what I did, he proceeded to tell us in his monotone crackhead voice, "well you'll know then how much money I earn and how I can afford to be here", he said in a pleasantly arrogant way. In knowing what he did I can confidently say he earns slightly more than the average dustbin man (not to poke fun at them) and we couldn't for the life of us figure out why he was so conceited and could only put it down to him being a complete chump! His worldly knowledge and blind faith in its complete inaccuracy only added to our opinion of him as a terd as he insisted Murcia was in Andalucia and not
a few hundred miles from there and that the Spanish language hardly varied at all throughout the world. He knew all about this having learnt to say O-La Rodney in the Catalan capital of Barcelona. During the day we watched a nice parade through the town and Stacie made a couple more excellent purchases to further test out the flexibility of her backpack and the strength of my back carrying all the extras she'd hidden in my bag. We made a poor call in opting for a cheap chinese which consisted of a plate stacked with as much rice as it could hold mixed with chicken, pork and I'm sure whatever else they could find on the floor for a bloat worthy price of 3 dollars each. On returning back to our hostal in the evening, we sought out the advice of the very helpful owner on posting back to the UK. While waiting in the recpetion we bumped into yet another crackpot originating from England and this time from Guildford. The other guy from the morning was in his 30s and had clearly had too many late nights but this guy was in his 50s and was completely and utter bonking mental. He didn't speak a word of Spanish but had arrived in Ecuador just iver a week ago with the crackpot idea of just walking into the mountains and befriending some of the indigenous tribes and just learning their native languages without seeing the need to pick up a bit of spanish. We had an interesting conversation with him as he insisted that England was just as corrupt as everywhere in Latin America and cited one example that in the UK people make a big deal out of what school tie you wear. Hmmm? He also said he was very surprised and disappointed to find people drove cars in Ecuador as I guess he was expecting to see everyone trotting down the streets with feathers in their hair. We think we heard him say that he was a shamen which I don't think has anything to do with the 90s group who performed Ebeenezer Good. On a slightly different note they where one of my older brothers favourite groups along with Pet Shop Boys and Kylie Minogue. A rather eclectic mix which I'm sure was commonplace amongst his fellow Oxford graduates at the time.
Saturday 10th March - Otavalo
So the big day of the main market arrived and unfortunately for us it was a bit of an anticlimax. We did indeed pound the streets for most of the day in search of bargains a la David Dickinson and did manage to make a few purchases but with intermittent rain dampening the spirits a little along with knowing that any big purchases would be nigh on impossible to get home, it wasn't quite what we hoped for. Still tomorrow we'll continue our journey on to Quito where it's nice to know I've just found out they've started protesting there about Chinese copper mining.
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Karen Hargreaves
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Hilarious!!
Well done Peter you have certainly found a new vocation, this entry is so funny. You two really manage to attract the nut cases don't you. Hope the Poncho's make it back to England. Keep the blogs coming just love to read what is happening to you both.