22 Nov

What a day. Natura and I woke up and walked around a bit. We started by walking over to the animal market. This could potentially be a vegetarians worst nightmare. They were selling every animal, cows, sheeps, pigs, llamas, chickens, guinea pigs, cats, dogs, ducks, etc. I don´t want to forget that they were serving food there as well.

As we walked back into town, everybody was setting up for the Saturday market. Now, I had heard that it was big, big I would have never suspected the reality of it. This market was on every inch of street for about six blocks by six blocks. It was big! It gets kind of redundent though. Everybody is selling pretty much the same 10 things, paintings, pots, textiles, blankets, rugs, hammocks, jewerly, etc... It really reminded me of being in Afghanistan.

We met up with Michael and his school group for a bit and walked around and bought things for a while. They took off and it was about time to eat dinner.

While we were all up in Otavalo, Michael was staying with an Indigenous family. They were having a baptism in the family that night. Michael said he would call if we were invited to the party. He called.

While Natura and I were waiting for the call, we were actually eating and drinking at this place in town. This older lady came by and asked,"what do you guys want to eat?" in English. We were a little surprised when she spoke English. We asked where she was from and told us a story.

"Yeah, I´m from Fresno, CA. I got here back in ´75. I had some good drug dealer friends down in Colombia that I came to meet. After that, I thought I was going to New Zealand and ended up in Ecuador somehow. I just decided to stay."

With a story like that, your mind can only think of what she has done since and where she has been.

We had eaten dinner, about $5.00 between the two of us. Then we started drinking these drinks with lime, sugar and some kind of cane alcohol. We had seven between the two of us for a $1.00 each. About half way through them, a couple over heard us talking about Alaska. Come to find out, they are from Headley Alaska. We sat and talked for a bit and then we got our call. I asked the lady how much we owed her. She replied, "just give me $7.00." Not too bad for seven drinks and two free meals, eh?

Natura and I got on the bus headed for Cotocachi where the baptism was going on. We got to the church and found Michael and Aaron, as they weren´t hard to spot being the two tallest in the crowd. We sat through the baptism and hopped in the back of some family members trucks.

They took us about three or four miles to a village called La Calera. Things started out a little slow. It was a very interesting party. Frist, they serve the mother and the god mother. Then everyone else is served. Everyone was served This flour soup, with a chunk of chicken and potatoes in it. The main party was served cuy (guinea pig) with their soup. The second course was pork from a pig roast, they had roasted two pigs, potatoes and mote which is pretty much hominy. It was all quite delicious.

Some interesting things about the party were that there were probably twenty people there, maybe more and it was very quite. Also, everything had to be served to everyone on a platter. You couldn´t just hand something to someone.

About the time were finished with dinner, a truck backed up and unloaded two big subwoofers. Let the party begin! The music started and people started dancing. People don´t just drink there. Everyone walks around with a shot glass and a bottle of something. Some would have beer, some would have wine, others with champagne, and other yet with this hot liquor. Everyone gets throughly happy because it is rude to deny a shot. Someone said, if you don´t want to drink anymore, leave. So, was drank. Aaron thought it would be a great idea for he, Michael, Natura and I to get our own boxes of wine to give a little pay back, so, we did. We each got a different flavored box of wine, which is about like wine cooler and walked around. I had peach; Natura, strawberry; Michael, apple; and Aaron, some hot liquor.

Everybody became really happy, everyone was dancing, everyone was having a good time.
About 12:00, everyone took off. They invited us to just stay since it would have been crazy to go back to Otavalo that night.

Natura, Micahel and I attempted to sleep and three of us in a full bed together. I had the cold, brick wall, with a huge gap between the bed and the wall. I didn´t sleep so well. Not to mention, there was a rooster on the roof that started yelling about 1:30am. Dogs were getting in fights during the night as well. It didn´t make for a very good sleep.