Sunday Adventures in Otavalo

Again, I was the first one to wake up of my group. I took advantage of the empty bathroom to shower which felt really good after all the dirt and grime of the day before. The rest of the group slowly awoke. I guess on of Belgiums came in and loudly announced in the room that it was pity to be still sleeping on such a nice day. Not such a subtle remark. While we were waiting for our breakfast, I talked to the hostel owner about going up to the Lagunas de Mojanda. My friends and I decided that for the sake of time, it would be better to pay an extra couple bucks per person and get a taxi ride there and back. We got all our stuff ready to leave and paid our bill. The taxi pulled up to take us up the mountain. It was a very nice taxi. It was more of an SUV/minivan/station wagon than a car so we could all fit in there comfortable. The taxi driver had specially picked out some American music for us. It was basically the greatest (or not so great) dance hits of the 80s. Oh well, he was more of a tour guide and talked to us most of the way up telling us the names of mountains we pasted, what the names of lakes we in Spanish and Quechua and a bit of Ecuadorian politics. He was a good of a driver as the taxi driver we had the night before was bad. It was a beautiful ride up to the lakes although the road wasn’t nearly as nice. They were in the process of fixing it more or less which means that they left huge piles of stones to fill in the missing ones allover. So when the driver wasn’t trying to avoid falling in a pothole or running over a big loose stone, he was trying to curve around piles of stone and brush. When we got up there, we were amazed to see people doing their daily jobs like herding cows up so high. I think the altitude was something like 3600m. And we definitely could feel it when we started walking. I finally figured out what makes the mountains so green here. It’s all these huge almost bushlike tuffs of grass. Of course, there’s more plants but that what’s covers most of the area. It was really neat to see how all the plants were made to live in such a harsh, windy environment: they were all really flexible (the grass) or lived very close to the ground (lots of the flowers). We walked on a dirt road to the second lake taking pictures of the incredible scenery along the way. The glasslike lake with the huge jagged mountains in the background was just amazing and the clouds were just perfect for taking pictures. Unfortunately, we only had time to see two of the three lakes. Even so, it was well worth the trip up there. On the way down, we were admiring the scenery when the taxi driver slowed down and pointed to a doglike animal. It was actually a wolf. It was so cool to see it. He said it’s very rare that anyone sees one. At first, the wolf was coming down the mountain but turned around when he saw us, then he saw something better like a rat and chased it down the mountain and pounced on it. I got one or two really good pictures of him. He looked kind of like a German Shepard colorwise, but was smaller and had a huge, long and bushy tail.

We arrived back at the hostel, got our backpacks and left down the path we had taken the night before to Otavalo. It was much nicer to do in the daylight. It was interesting to see what we had walked through in the dark. Unfortunately, it was very windy which is not a good combination with a dirt path. We had to stop a couple times to blink the dust out of our eyes and wait for the cloud to settle. When we got into Otavalo, we stopped at a viveria (basically a convenience store just no gasoline) to buy some food for lunch. Mmm, bread and yogurt for me. I just love the bread here plus it’s so cheap! Instead of walking to the bus terminal, which was on the other side of town, we just flagged a bus down on the side of the Pan-American Highway. The first one was full but the second one had exactly six seats open. It was a huge bus! There were two levels of seating. I had never seen a bus like that before. I found out why about half an hour later. The bus was from Columbia. We got stopped by military police who checked passports and cedulas (Ecuadorian national ID card). Everyone around me had Columbian passports. The police even searched a few bags and boxes on the bus. It was quite interesting. The rest of the ride to Quito was uneventful. I got home just before dark.