Otavalo, Quito Sightseeing, and Roses

Hi Everyone,

Sorry I haven't updated in a while, I was a little sick last week (a side effect of my malaria pills) and I've been really busy this week with work. I finally have time to kill now, so I'll let you know what I've been up to!

On Saturday I went to Otavalo, a city 2 hours north of Quito, with two of my friends, Rachel and Miriam. Otavalo is famous for its weaving as well as its huge Saturday artisan market. We took a bus from Quito (it only cost $2!) and got to Otavalo around noon and started shopping! The market was completely overwhelming at first, during the week it's confined to one area called La Plaza de los Ponchos, but on Saturday there are stalls set up on all the streets around the Plaza. We all had a few things in mind that we wanted to get, and decided to do a sweep of the market to see what there was before we actually started shopping. One thing that my family warned me about before we went is the prices because a lot of the vendors will jack up the prices for certain items when they see that someone is a gringo (white person). We all bargained for almost everything that we bought (usually you don't bargain for something that costs $5 or less) but it got very tiring by the end of the day.

For sale in the market are a lot of woven goods (sweaters, wall hangings, tablecloths, blankets, hats, scarves, bags), jewelry, traditional indigenous outfits, animals and other things carved from wood, paintings made by indigenous artists, and even modern clothing and shoes from American stores. I bought an alpaca wool sweater, earrings, a hat, and even an Ecuadorian national soccer team jersey! It was a really fun day, and we all felt a little shocked by how much money we had spent at the end of the day (not much by American standards, but a lot for here) but we were definitely happy with our purchases.

On Sunday my family took me around Quito to see some of the places that I hadn't been to yet. First we went to the first church in Quito, which was cool but we couldn't go inside because they were having Mass. After that we went to a park across the street that has a fake little lagoon area and my dad rowed us all around in a rowboat. He wasn't a very good rower, but we made it all the way around eventually. My mom kept saying that now I could tell everyone at home about the yacht ride I went on in Ecuador, which was pretty funny. After we got out of our "yacht" my brother and sister and I played this 'game" where you basically shoot a dart out of a gun at a wall covered in candy wrappers, and if you hit a wrapper you get that candy. We all ended up getting something, which was good because I was not very confident in my shooting abilities!

After that we went to La Virgen de El Panecillo, which is a huge statue of the Virgin of Quito that was built on top of a hill. The Virgin statue was a little underwhelming, but there were some really great views of Quito from the hill and also the terrace on the statue (there's a stairway you can climb inside of the statue). Next we drove to El Centro Historico to walk around and visit a church and a museum there. The church we went to was la Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus, which was really big and really cool. We almost didn't get in though, because our tickets were $3 all together, we only had a $20 bill, and the woman at the ticket desk couldn't make change. My brother ended up going to a store and buying a notebook so we would have change to get in! The church was really beautiful inside, and almost every inch of the ceiling and walls was covered in gold.

After that we went to a museum called El Museo Alberto Mena Caamano. I'm pretty sure it was about the history of the independence of Ecuador, but our guide spoke very fast Spanish so it was a little hard for me to keep up. The museum was basically a bunch of wax sculptures of different people who were parts of important historical events, so it was a little funny to be staring at a person and not really be sure of who they were and what they did. Once the tour of the museum was over we were going to have lunch (it was 3, I was starving) at a restaurant in El Centro, but it closed at 2:30, so we ended up going to one of the malls in Quito called Quicentro Shopping to have lunch. We didn't get there until 4, and at that point I was ready to eat anything that was put in front of me! We ate in the food court and I had a pretty lackluster plate of spaghetti with meat sauce, but I was so hungry that I was just happy to have food. After lunch we walked around the mall for a little while, got ice cream, and then got in the car, which I assumed meant we were going home. We actually ended up going to El Parque Metropolitano, one of the parks in Quito, and went for a walk. It was pretty cold at that point and I was really tired but it was nice to walk around with my family, and after our walk we played on the playground for a little while, which was pretty fun. After that we finally headed home, where I started to tackle the massive amounts of work I had to start for this week.

Yesterday we went on a field trip to a flower farm and a rose plantation. The flower/rose industry is huge in Ecuador, and Ecuador is one of the biggest producers of roses in the world. The farms were both really interesting, the flower farm was much smaller and mostly produces baby's breath and delphinia. The rose plantation was a much bigger, industrialized place that's part of a huge corporation called RosaPrima. We got to see one of their greenhouses, and also how they sort, pack, and ship the roses. They even let us make our own bouquets of roses to take home with us! It was really interesting to see both of the farms, because I had never given much thought to where flowers like baby's breath and roses actually come from. It was also a little confusing for all of us because we had learned before about how bad the rose industry is (there is a lot of pesticide use, pollution, and exploitation of workers, especially women) but at the farms they kept telling us that we should buy more flowers because each flower is tied to one of the workers and their family. We had a discussion with our ADs today about what we had seen yesterday and they told us that the best thing to do is to buy local flowers, because importing flowers is so destructive for the environment.

Today was a pretty exciting day for me because I chose my ISP! I will be spending four weeks in the mountains (near where we were for our cloud forest excursion) using camera traps to study spectacled bears! Spectacled bears (also called Andean bears) are the only bears native to South America, and very little is known about them. I'll be setting up camera traps, mapping where I put them, and using the developed photos to identify individuals, among other things. I'm really excited to finally have a project so that I can start planning and getting ready for ISP!

I put some new pictures up from my weekend, so click the link at the top right hand corner of the blog page to get to them!

Hasta luego,
Caroline