{"id":40,"date":"2012-08-12T19:21:48","date_gmt":"2012-08-13T00:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omasblog.mcguireclan.org\/?p=40"},"modified":"2012-08-13T19:37:41","modified_gmt":"2012-08-14T00:37:41","slug":"ecuador-weekend-august-10-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.omasblog.mcguireclan.org\/?p=40","title":{"rendered":"Ecuador Weekend August 10 -12"},"content":{"rendered":"

We were able to join a Vision Journey Tour (http:\/\/www.hcjb.org\/engage\/vision-journey\/vision-journeys.html) and take an overnight trip to Otavalo\u00c2\u00a0 http:\/\/www.galapagosonline.com\/Explore_Ecuador\/Andes\/otavalo-area\/Otavalo.htm<\/a>, (a craft town) and Cotacachi (Ecuador’s leather capital).<\/p>\n

We left Friday afternoon and made it to Otavalo in time to watch them tear down their craft stalls.\u00c2\u00a0 They had piles of crafts that they would put into huge bags and carry them to hand pushed wagons to take home or wherever they store them.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes they hire people to carry their goods.\u00c2\u00a0 Often the bags of goods are larger than the person carrying them.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a mass of people shopping, selling and some little ladies begging. I think it smells better than Africa.\u00c2\u00a0 They had food, carvings, scarves from Alpaca and pretend Alpaca. (I hope the ones I bought were real Alpaca.\u00c2\u00a0 They said they were).\u00c2\u00a0 Big bags full of shelled corn, bags of spices, piles of fruit and vegetables.\u00c2\u00a0 Everyone calling out their wares.\u00c2\u00a0 It really was a wake up to all the senses, smell, sight, hearing and even touch. It was kind of fun to barter with them. I found the easiest way was to pick up several things and ask a certain price for all of them.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a bit more difficult when I bought just one thing, but still worked.<\/p>\n

Saturday morning was breakfast at the hotel, http:\/\/www.hotelelindioinn.com\/imagenes.php, Indio Inn in Otavalo<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 It was quite nice.\u00c2\u00a0 We had dinner there on Friday night.\u00c2\u00a0 It was Bread, steak with potatoes, rice and veggies.\u00c2\u00a0 Fruit juice and fruit for dessert.\u00c2\u00a0 We also had breakfast there, which was bread, fruit, eggs and juice, coffee or tea.<\/p>\n

After shopping until noon on Saturday we went on to Cotacachi, where we ate lunch (taco with meat and avocado filling, soup with popcorn and banana chips for croutons, chicken, vegetables, fried potatoes (we skipped the rice) and strawberries and cream for dessert… oh yes, fresh fruit to drink\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 On this bus trip, a couple of young girls rode the bus from Otavalo and sang to us and sold dolls and scarves\u00c2\u00a0 They got off n Cotacachi where they would catch another bus and do it all over again.\u00c2\u00a0 The older was 17 and the younger 5.\u00c2\u00a0 Very sweet girls.\u00c2\u00a0 We walked down the street in this town and saw the leather goods.\u00c2\u00a0 I sure wish I had picked up that leather purse for $12.\u00c2\u00a0 Larry will have to bring me back down, I guess. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Then we went to the town with wood carvings.\u00c2\u00a0 We shopped and looked at carvings, listened to a band play and sing in the city center and talked a little with an old homeless lady that has been there for a long time.\u00c2\u00a0 This was also a potty stop.\u00c2\u00a0 Paid 15 cents for some toilet paper.\u00c2\u00a0 The carvings were beautiful.\u00c2\u00a0 I bought a small hand carved nativity that was carved using the faces of local people.<\/p>\n

Our trip home was slow.\u00c2\u00a0 I think it was about 7:00 when we got home.\u00c2\u00a0 The road winds through the mountains, with bumper to bumper traffic a lot of the way.\u00c2\u00a0 The mountain are beautiful.\u00c2\u00a0 There are green houses for roses all over, even on the steep sides of hills.\u00c2\u00a0 They ship roses from here all over the world.\u00c2\u00a0 They are cheap and easy to find here.<\/p>\n

Sunday we worshiped with some of the English speaking people here.\u00c2\u00a0 It was actually in both languages for the songs and scripture, but the preaching was in two languages.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a two hour service.<\/p>\n

We had lunch at a little place ‘around the corner’ and had a hamburger and fries.\u00c2\u00a0 I wonder if there is a place that serves Ecuadorian food, or if they are like Americans and don’t have\u00c2\u00a0 ‘local’ food.\u00c2\u00a0 After lunch we decided to explore a bit and walked to several stores, the local market and then to the Mall.\u00c2\u00a0 It had a lot of American shops including, McDonald’s,\u00c2\u00a0 KFC and\u00c2\u00a0 Hallmark, as well as others.<\/p>\n

We bought a 2 liter of coke on the way home as well as crackers and hand sanitizer.\u00c2\u00a0 If we have a big meal at noon, we will probably snack on peanut butter and crackers\u00c2\u00a0 and fruit in the evening.<\/p>\n

I forgot to mention that Friday morning, I went with Larry over to the storage area when the transmitter is, and helped to put screws back in place and a few things before our trip.<\/p>\n

It has been a good weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 So far, we have really enjoyed Ecuador.\u00c2\u00a0 Hopefully, I will have some pictures to add soon. We left our camera charging at home, so had to borrow a camera.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were able to join a Vision Journey Tour (http:\/\/www.hcjb.org\/engage\/vision-journey\/vision-journeys.html) and take an overnight trip to Otavalo\u00c2\u00a0 http:\/\/www.galapagosonline.com\/Explore_Ecuador\/Andes\/otavalo-area\/Otavalo.htm, (a craft town) and Cotacachi (Ecuador’s leather capital). We left Friday afternoon and made it to Otavalo in time to watch them tear down their craft stalls.\u00c2\u00a0 They had piles of crafts that they would put into … Continue reading Ecuador Weekend August 10 -12<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecuador"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.omasblog.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.omasblog.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.omasblog.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.omasblog.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.omasblog.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.omasblog.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50,"href":"http:\/\/www.omasblog.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/50"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.omasblog.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.omasblog.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.omasblog.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}