Adventure in Otovalo

We´re spending our last few days in Otovalo, a historic town known for centuries for being traders and expert artisans. We´re armed with a Spanish ¨cheat sheet¨that we carry in our pocket. So far so good. Thankfully, we´re pretty good at charades and smiles and laughter go a long way while we are butchering the language. The children have been fantastic at greeting folks and introducing themselves. Jessie regularly hollers ¨pero¨, spanish for dog, at the many specimens roaming the streets.

Today was quite an adventure. We took a taxi an hour or so north to pick up the goods we ordered last week from a woman running her own microenterprise out of her house. We didn´t realize quite how remote her bario is. We finally found her and our fun Ecuadorian blouses for women and girls. What a talented, gracious, creative woman! She employs many women from her neighborhood in a sunny workshop behind her small home. Her husband is permanently in a wheel chair from a bike robbery, but she is perservering in a beautiful, hopeful sort of way. We are thankful to have met her and to be able to bring her wares back to the shops.

Tomorrow we will rise with the sun to go to the local animal market, then hit the largest artisan market in all of Latin America. I´m sure it will be something to behold! More later on our plentiful Otovalian adventure.