blanket bargains

oh em gee bargaining is exhausting! I'm getting too old for this stuff ;)  our morning started off with the usual peguche hostel buffet breakfast of breads y quesos and yogurt y fruita and mini pancakes and cafe y tea... we're spoiled... see how easy it is to get fat in a country where everyone else is starving?!...

then we taxi'd in to otovalo to catch the morning animal market - not my favorite part of the trip because I love animals way too much to see tons of poorly cared for ones in crammed cages. plus we were walking in ankle deep mud (ok that's a little bit of an exaggeration), that smelled like urine and poo (not an exaggeration) - nothin like a morning stroll through feces! and yet again I'm potty talking, clearly I have chosen the correct specialty... we saw everything from baby chicks to chickens, bunnies, guinea pig (huge!), normal pigs in mud pits (so cliché), sheep goats cows and horses, a single llama (or perhaps alpace, we still can't tell the difference), annnddd lots of puppies and kittens breaking my heart in muddy little crates - holy rip my heart out and stomp on it in the poo, these little guys were sooo pitiful :( ...consequently I had had enough of the animal market about 1.5 minutes into it... everyone else felt the same shortly thereafter, so we walked to the craft market and here I bargained away my dolares por like cinco horas!!...

totally exhausted we walked with our loot back to the hostel - about a 40 minute stroll (just follow the railroad tracks)... liz, trisa and I had the afternoon off while everyone else had spanish lessons (our prof is outta town for the wkend), so liz and I made our way to the waterfall and nature area just down the road from the hostel. the problema was that with carnival coming up on tuesday the chaos builds the closer we get, and the party in the streets in the small town that is the gateway to the waterfall could have easily passed for the real thing...

as two gringas strolling through this party (looking strikingly uninvited and out of place), we stand out as bad as ever and again are the target of the stupid foam attacks!! we entered the park conveniently at the same time as a group of probably 10 male tweens (guessing there may have been some planning involved on their part), who at first didn't seem gutsy enough to attack... sadly that judgement turned out to be way off. we split ways with them and their mischievous whispers to each other (likely daring one of their friends to make the first move), but unfortunately met back up with the group shortly thereafter in the most undesirable of circumstances where we were basically trapped aside from a narrow entry onto the main path, which they were all surrounding. and now they were somehow more than confident enough to spray us with the foam. at least they didn't have any of the colored powder.

 initially I thought water and foam were all I was up against with this carnival business, but today we have added new arsenal into the mix - colored powder sold in little plastic bags for super cheap, the messiest weapon yet. ugh...  so once we escaped the initial ambush/cornering, liz and I had a beautiful hike past waterfalls and up to lockouts and by caves and along jungle paths near roaring streams and across a huge suspension bridge bearing a sign that said people may only pass in pairs (because that is all the bridge can hold?!!)... when we were about half way across some european looking women, who clearly didnt read the sign, began to cross the bridge - liz and I ran the rest of the way, obviously. the bridge is however, still intact, despite momentarily exceeding max capacity...

so that was pretty much the day, now I'm post-workout and ready for dinner. headed that way now, we'll see what they have on the menu tonight, it smelled delish this afternoon!! 

xo linds