Otavalo

Chris, Steve and i took a 3hr bus up to Otavalo on the weekend. Unfortunately Steve had his bag broken into... and by broken into, i mean they to a knife to his bag, cut a 30cm hole in the end of it and stole most of his stuff! including his passport! he had his bag between his feet and didn´t feel a thing. luckily, chris and i had our bags on ourlaps... but we´re now a little nervous to catch public busses long distance.
None the less, Otavalo was great. we found a cute little restaurant for steve to drown his sorrows in Cuban Rum, with live traditional Ecuadorian music and good food. Otavalo is famous for it´s saturday markets and it´s ovbious why. the dawn markets are for the locals, selling farm animals and barrels of grain + spices. then at 8am start the local markets for locals, traveling ecuadorians and tourists. the entire city becomes filled with stalls of arts and craft, clothes, food, games, anything you can think of... we even found a stall selling only shoelaces?!?
we also went to Catacatchi, famous for it´s leather goods... cow, snake, caiman (small alagator).
we also climbed a live volcano: Volcan Cuicatchi. names so because the island inthe centre of the lake that fills the volcano shaft apparently looks like a guinea pig: cuy or cui. even though there is alake in the shaft of the volcano, people still see bubbles arising from the lake every so often.