Otavalo, Ecuador by Anna

The best markets ever! When we got there we were done with buses and travelling so we settled in at our hostel. After a little while we made our way downtown to check out the markets because we had heard that the markets were amazing. We saw around fifty markets with souvenirs, ponchos, hats, carpets, scarves and a tonne of other things. We had a quick look around and we were also told to come back on Saturday for the huge markets. We left after getting Elise the cutest poncho for only eight bucks, and we loved to bargain down the price. We went back to our hostel and went out for dinner at a bar with a DJ playing all of the old songs that my parents found awesome but I found………..weird. The next morning we went out for crepes, (we were so excited to eat them after months of eggs!) then we headed to Parque d’el Condor. We had to hurry because there was a show that started at 11:30 but there were not a lot of people so we had good seats. The show was pretty cool because there were condors, owls, falcons, harpies, and eagles. They would fly so far. After the show we walked around a bit longer and saw a lot more birds. Then we slowly made our way down to a waterfall. It was so nice. We also went to a little Indigenous experience which shortly turned into a very steep hike. After that we went out for dinner at a pizza place which had good food. The next day we woke up early and we all got into a jeep, that took us up to the top of the Cuicocha volcano. When we got to the top, we hiked around the Laguna Cuicocha. It was fun but the altitude was hard to hike in. After the hike, we got bikes out of the van and started to bike down, down, down for 18 kilometers. We started off on a trail that was a bit challenging for me, but apparently impossible for my dad, so my dad and sisters stuck to the road and i went down the trail. it was fun but i had a few big wipeouts. We then met up and continued to go down.Then, we went out for lunch. After that we finished the night with a nice walk around the town. On Saturday morning we went to the markets. We were so surprised because they had blocked the whole main square and ten or twelve blocks more for the markets. We looked around for a bit and we shopped until we had to hop on a bus and go to QUITO! The capital of Ecuador. It was really interesting to see all of the Indegenous boys with braids and all of the girls with typical Ecuadorian dresses on. We had a pretty nice experience we had in Otavalo.