Ecuador 2 – Otavalo or bust!
The Main Square in Otavalo
North of Quito about two hours by bus (and $2 each way) exists a huge market of food, weavings, hats, jewelry and much more in the little village of Otavalo. The biggest market day of the week is Saturday though the market takes place every day of the week. I decided to go on Saturday and true enough…the market is huge. Overwhelming even and for someone who now has to carry everything she purchases with her for the next 6 months…Otavalo is merely a place to “window shop.” It was fun to wander through stall after stall of everything under the sun…here are some pictures so you can get an idea of what´s for sale.
On Sunday it was time for me to leave Quito and frankly, I´m not going to miss it. Quito has a pretty significant pollution problem and merely walking down the street one finds themselves in a cloud of diesel exhaust quite often. It´s also a bit damp and chilly in Quito though the surrounding scenery of the lush green countryside high in the mountains is very beautiful…and a stark contrast to the dry and brown grass found in the mountains of Montana. Most of the sights in Quito can be seen in two days or less…though Quito does make for an excellent base of operations for the many other side trips (like Otavalo). While Quito itself lacked charm there are some very excellent things about Ecuador worth mentioning.
4 Excellent Things You Did Not Know About Ecuador
- The people are really, really helpful and friendly. Everyone I´ve met so far has been very friendly and helpful…which is a bit of a contrast to some places in Europe where people are not especially friendly to foreigners. Most people are very curious about my life in the States…typically I am asked about things in the following order: my family, my job, George Bush and the war in Iraq…and frequently about the cost of things in the U.S. as compared to Ecuador. More on this later.
- Ecuador´s official currency is the U.S. dollar. I totally don´t get how this works but it is true…all transactions are in U.S. dollars and while there are some special Ecuadorian coins, the majority of the cash being tendered is exactly what you´re all using at home. I´m not going to lie to you…this is extremeley convenient. Not having to change money and figure out new coins makes my life much easier. Still I don´t get it. Does the U.S. treasury just print extra money for Ecuador? Anyone with some insight…please clue me in.
- The food is so yummy and so fresh. I think I´ve had more fresh fruit in the last week than I´ve had in the last two months. We have fresh squeezed juice of many different types (including some fruit only grown here in Ecudor) with every meal and soup (which I love) comes with every lunch. As in Spain, the last meal of the day is rather light and not as substantial as the midday meal. Typically for lunch there is soup, some type of meat, rice and some type of fruit (and juice of course). For dinner…a small sandwich is typical.
- The people speak a very clear and reasonably paced version of Spanish that is easy to understand. Thankfully I´m able to understand more here than in Spain and certainly more than the average Mexican speaker…both of whom speak very quickly.
On Sunday it was off to Manta…a smallish city on the coast of about 250,000 inhabitants. I chose this city because it is not at all touristy and with few English speakers I will be forced to practice my Spanish. Instead of flying, I decided to take the 10 hour bus trip from Quito down through the Andes and into the tropical zone of Manta. While the trip was beautiful…it was also brutal and included some roads that could barely be called roads. And went past some houses that could barely be called houses. I arrived tired and grimy on Sunday night to a beautiful room in my host family´s house. More on this next time.
Tags: 8 - Ecuador, Andes, food, Manta, Otavalo, transportation
Stacey
October 17th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
I don’t get the money thing either, but sure is nice not to exchange!
October 18th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
A little info on the money thing.
The sucre was the currency of Ecuador between 1884 and 2000. Its ISO code was ECS and it was subdivided into 10 decimos or 100 centavos. The sucre replaced the peso at par. It was named after Antonio José de Sucre. In 2000, in response to a major financial crisis, the country switched its currency to the United States dollar at a rate of 1 dollar = 25,000 sucres. The sucre was fully demonetized shortly after the transition. Ecuador now only issues its own coins.
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:33 am
I’m confused about the money after Faye’s response. It is cool that you don’t have to exchange, but what is this? So Ecuador prints United States Currency? and mints United States coins? How can that be?