$20 for a piglet, $15 for a blanket!

The Otavalo market is profitable enough to stay open 7 days a week but Saturday takes the cake for busiest day. Nearly empty hotels throughout town fill up on Friday night with tourists arriving from Quito- and everywhere else in the world. All of a sudden you can walk down the street and hear English, German, and Korean mixed in with the Spanish. Tourist central indeed- it’s one of the first places we’ve seen people just wander around with digital SLRs strapped around their necks. There is of course a reason for the hubbub- it’s the home of some of the most famous crafts that come from South America.

Saturday is the main day for the traditional Otavalo market, which is actually divided into 4 different sections around town. The crafts market is the main draw for tourists, where members of local indigenous groups showcase jewelry, carvings, and especially woven goods of every color. The food market causes sensory overload with colorful carts of fruit, sacks of grain, hanging cow organs, grilled chicken feet, and whole roasted pigs. The small and large animal markets, located next to each other, are easily the most interesting part of the whole affair. This section is mostly for locals, situated outside of town and busiest before most tourists finish breakfast. There are crates filled with ducklings rushing en mass into each other. Cows, donkeys, and sheep are docilely led around and tied up at any available fencepost. And most noticeable are the squeals of pigs as people struggle to drag them anywhere they don’t want to go. Forget mules; there should be an expression: stubborn as a pig.

We arrived in Otavalo on a Thursday night. Despite its emptiness at the time, its touristy nature called out from the souvenir shops, the restaurants with English menus, the tour companies, and the hotels on every corner. As the books say, the tour groups rolled in on Friday evening. Buses filled with people saying “oh, grassy-ass seen-yoor. Hasta lou-y-gooo.” Megan’s Spanish accent has never sounded so perfect. We’re not in Colombia anymore…

This place does have a few redeeming qualities though. It’s set in a beautiful valley with at least one snowcapped volcano visible. We hiked to waterfall a couple kilometers away from town today. Granted, tourists left and right as well, but you can’t blame people for wanting to enjoy nature. After spending a minute absorbing the mist churned up by the cascade we found a side path that led us to the top of the falls. We scrambled up the rocks and at one point even climbed directly over the rushing river leading to the falls. We decided our sneakers gave us adequate traction to make it across… and then looked back to see a local girl make the same crossing in her heels. Oh well. At the top we got to sit at the edge of the falls and dip our feet in the powerful rush of water. It was a cleansing after the market.