Destination: Otavalo (part 3 of 3)

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Sunday swung back and forth from slow and easy-going to hectic and hurried. We slept in, gathered our stuff together at a leisurely pace, and then Ami went downstairs to ask the hostal owner if it would be possible for us to leave our stuff at the hostal during the day. When he came back upstairs he informed us that not only could we not leave our stuff, the owner was going to close up and leave at 10 am. Well, that certainly lit a fire under our butts. We gathered up everything and hit the street in search of breakfast and somewhere we could leave our stuff. Breakfast consisted of munchies from a bakery, and we ended up leaving everything at a hostal kitty-corner to the hostal where we had spent the night. From there we were off to La Cascada de Peguche, a waterfall near Otavalo. Or at least that's what we thought at the time. Turns out we read the guidebook wrong, and the walk there was going to take well over an hour versus the forty minutes we originally planned for. After much deliberation we decided to catch a bus to the falls. According to the guidebook, all we needed to do was go to the terminal and hop on a bus marked "Cascada de Peguche." Easy enough, right?

Umm, not quite. The woman at the ticket counter told Ami that we would have to wait across the street for a bus. So across the street we went. Where we waited. And waited. And waited. And listened to an elderly woman lament and cry. All I caught was that she wanted a bus to Otavalo. Or something like that. Just as we were contemplating defeat, we spotted our bus. So did everyone else. Nearly everyone waiting at the stop clambered onto the already full bus, which meant the three of us were standing in the aisle, hanging on for dear life and trying not to squish anyone.* For roughly fifteen minutes the bus bounded over cobblestone roads, my teeth rattled around in my head, the bus attendant somehow managed to walk through the entire bus and collect money from the passengers (18 cents a person -- not bad!). Yep, we made it to the falls alive. And if the bus attendant had not told us it was time to get off who knows where we would have ended up.

The falls were well worth the wait. I mean, I've seen larger waterfalls before (it's hard to beat Niagara) but it was so refreshing to see some moving water and TREES! The path leading up to the falls was lined with skinny, towering eucalyptus trees. The air was so fresh and smelled fantastic. I'm a big fan of eucalyptus trees.

Once we got to the falls and had admired them for awhile we followed a path that led up around the top of the falls. We ended up above them (nowhere near the edge) and near a smaller waterfall. Sticking out into the stream was a large rock/dirt wall, and in the wall was a hole just large enough to scoot through. Around the wall we could see people in the stream, so we decided to crawl through the wall and go wading. Brenna and I went first (Ami was a bit hesitant, but did join us after a few minutes). When Brenna and I popped through we came out on a small clearing. A couple was perched on the left side, putting their shoes back on, which left Brenna and I with the right side. This was, of course, the side that was just a large rock with nothing near it or under it to step on. Brenna dropped down into the water and then it was wussy Emily's turn. It's really hard to convince your feet to leave solid ground when you can't see or feel where they're going to land, ya know? So as I'm preparing to drop in the water (and making a fool of myself, of course) a man popped out from the hole in the wall and offered me his hands to hold onto while I eased into the water. Ahh, the kindness of strangers. My Español may be limited, but at least I know how to say "gracias." Which I did. Many times. 😊

Wading in the stream was much like wading in any other well-populated stream except better somehow. Maybe I've just been inhaling smog for too long, but I had a blast. It was a perfect way to end our Otavalo visit.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. Well, almost. Kinda. After we returned from Cascada de Peguche, ate lunch and retrieved our belongs, it was back to the bus terminal. Where we were hustled. This one particular hustler tried repeatedly to get us and other Quito-bound folk to board an already-full bus. No way, dude. Not when there are four more buses labeled "Quito" in the terminal. We boarded the second Quito bus, and everything proceded as normal (venders hopped on and off just before we left, selling helado y jugo (one nearly didn't make it off in time), the attendant gathered money from the passengers, but then -- horror of horrors -- they decided to show a movie. And not just any movie. The movie of choice was Herbie: Fully Loaded starring Lindsay Lohan. Dubbed in Spanish. Wow. What a gem of a movie. Glad American cinema was well represented. I tuned it out for the most part, particularly when it started raining fairly hard. I couldn't really see the road from where I was sitting (which was just as well, since I had a pretty good idea what it looked like). Eventually the bus came to a stop, and it became apparent that the road was washed out up ahead. We plowed on ahead anyway (even though I was secretly hoping we would have to return to Otavalo, just for adventure's sake, but then I would have had to call Vida Verde in the morning and explain that I was stuck in Otavalo and couldn't come to class. THAT would have been an interesting conversation to listen in on).

Anyway, we plowed on ahead. At several points we had to go into the other lane to avoid rocks and mud, which was quite . . . interesting. It's not that the road conditions were the worse I've seen, it's more that the driving tendencies of Ecuadorians aren't quite the sanest. So I was more worried than I normally would have been, but clearly I should have had no fear. We survived the mud, rocks and other cars, and arrived in Quito in one piece. The bus did dump everyone off on the side of the road, rather than the terminal, but, eh, what can you do? The man had just battled rain and narrow roads for us, so I wasn't about to complain.

And that about concludes our Otavalo adventure. We caught a cab home (after one denied us -- the nerve!) and slept soundly. Overall it was a great trip and we would really like to go back. But next weekend's already booked -- Mindo or bust! 😊

Take care, all,
em



*I don't know if I've mentioned this, but we are taller than the vast majority of Ecuadorians, particularly the indigenous people (who make up most of the population in the Otavalo area). It occurred to me the other day that the people here would probably get a big kick out of my 6 foot + brothers and uncles.

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