Otavalo Take 3

So Yonseili was my alarm today since I am letting Joaquin use mine for school.  She called me at 7am so that I can get ready to go to Otavalo with Joaquin.  We ended up leaving at about 9:30, went to fybeca to get money from the ATM and then got a taxi to take us to the bus terminal Carcelen.  When we bought the ticket we headed to the bus and I noticed we were probably on the wrong one.  We got off before it left, asked two men nearby which bus we had to get on and turns out the guy we bought the ticket from sold us a ticket to a bus that doesn’t even go to Otavalo… what a liar!  Anyway, one of the men was driver of the other bus that passes by Otavalo and he said he’d tell us when we should get off.  So we hopped on the bus and got to Otavalo at around 12pm.  We were dropped off about 2 blocks from the market so the nearby taxi driver charged us $1 to get us there.  It felt good to be in Otavalo but I was also sad to think it would definitely be my last time.

The market was good, we walked around, bought a few things and for a while split up.  I later received a text from Joaquin asking if I was still in the market.  Apparently he was talking to a guy who knows how to play charangos and sells them as well.  Joaquin knows how to play the guitar and was interested in buying a cheap, “trashy” guitar so that he wouldn’t feel bad about leaving it behind when he left to San Francisco.  A charango would be easy to carry around.

We left to eat at the place that I had eaten at the last time I was here with Yonseili, Vincent and Lauren.  I don’t know the name of it at the moment, but there we got nachos, I got chocolate and Joaquin got lemonade I think.  He tried the nachos with hot oriental sauce.  He barely put any on it and his tongue was burning up.  It was insane to watch and I obviously couldn’t help but laugh.  He thought I was “hard core” when I ate it.  I just let him know that back home we put sauce on everything so it’s no big deal.  Before we left the restaurant he talked about the charango and wondered whether he should buy it for $70.  I encouraged him if he was thinking about it that much so we went back to the seller and when the seller saw Joaquin he laughed.  The seller wasn’t surprised it seemed.  I asked the seller if he could lower the price and he went down to $60.  Joaquin chose his charango (they all had different designs), chose his charango carry bag, and also received an instruction booklet on what chords he could play and also included songs he could play.  I then took a picture of them two.  The picture is pretty cool.

We had to head back home immediately to make it back in time for the Liga game he said he’d watch with Carlos at home.  At one point the bus driver was taking his time and the people on the bus were yelling at him to hurry up.  As we got closer to Quito the bus driver was driving really fast.  I think he was also in a hurry to watch the game.  Really.  We finally arrived at about 4ish when the game was about to start and headed home.  The taxi driver wanted to charge us $3.50 although I told him the guy in the morning only charged us $2.  He didn’t believe me but, whatever, we were in a hurry to get home so we took the lame cab.

Martica and Yonseili were at the house with the family.  Carlos was upstairs in front of the TV of course and Joaquin joined him.  Liga won!  Before the game even ended, because Carlos knew they’d win, the guys went out somewhere to celebrate and shortly after them Yonseili and I got ready to meet Raquel at Sweet & Coffee to give her a goodbye/birthday present and our presentation papers so that she could revise them for us.

On our way to the Sweet & Coffee place, we saw many cars pass by with Liga flags and they were all beeping.  It was crazy to see how so many people could be so happy about the win.  We met up with Raquel and as always it was good to see her.  She told us she would take the papers home and give them to us later so she could really edit them well.  She took us home.

Yonseili ordered pizza and we had that for dinner.  I’m still feeling sick.  I laughed plenty with Yonseili.  I took a little nap before I officially went to sleep.

Highlight of the day: Saying goodbye to Otavalo… although it wasn’t easy, I was happy to have gone one more time.