Weekend Avengers' Adventures

Every Saturday, a town a few hours out of Quito, Otavalo, holds a giant market full of everything you could imagine.  I mean, everything.  There are endless stands of scarves, blankets, jewelry, toys, art, shoes, ponchos, Panama hats, UNDERWEAR (umm, ew), and electronics.  Then, there are an abundance of stands selling food (my favorite!).  Now, you have your basic fruits and vegetables that anyone around the world can recognize--tomatoes, lettuce, oranges, etc--but mixed in are all the  local fruits and vegetables that I have never seen or heard of.  Juice is very popular here; everyone orders it when they go out to eat or buy a cup from street vendors--my favorite is naranjilla (very similar to an orange).  However, I also tried passion fruit and guava, so far.  Also, there are animal parts everywhere; piles of chicken feet, bowls of lard, and pig's heads are on display throughout the market.  

Some other fruits consumed were oritos (finger bananas,  flavor of a ripe banana with a more solid texture) and gronsella which looks like a mini lime green pumpkin and is SO sour, my mouth and throat completely dried out.

I also ate Yuca bread which was sold to us outside of the car window at a gas station.  Yuca is a white root which is cooked in numerous different ways.  It is very starchy and tastes like a sweeter potato. 

After spending time at the market, Federico brou

ght Paul and I to a few large lakes near the indigenous city.  We ate overlooking the water at San Paulo; no one knows exactly how deep this lake is, yet there is an annual race from one side to another in the freezing water.  This lake also has cabins that are available to rent (CRAZY cheap, around 80 dollars for a family for the weekend, including meals).  There are many beautiful flowers

, horses, and a playground for children where I found this    

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                                                     now I know why I came to Ecuador:)   

On Sunday, I rented bikes with a few guys from the hostel and rode around the city for a few hours.  This isn't as relaxing as it seems.  The rental fee was 5 dollars for

 three hour...CHEAP, however, the bike was definitely nothing special.  Though it was supposed to have 18 gears, only two worked, making traveling at high speeds quite difficult; riding with traffic was frighte

ning because A) they drive crazier than in Boston and B) I could only move so quickly due to the lack of higher gears and C) some of the hills are quite large (think almost the level of San Francisco).  I hate to admit that I had to walk my bike at some points--I'll just blame it on the altitude :).  We had a lot of fun though, traveling through old town and new town while looking at significant churches and sights.  Even though I put on a bunch of sun-block, my back was fried and still is :( 

Yesterday,  Michael (a guy in my room from Australia) and I went to the Teleferico which is a cable car that brings you to the summit of  Cruz Loma and to the skirts of the Pichincha

 volcano, allowing you to see 14 peaks of the Andes from a height of 4050 meters.  We hiked about halfway to the summit of Pichincha and decided to turn around--we weren't really dressed for the snow that we were starting to see and dark clouds were rolling in on top of us so we decided to cut our losses and roll out.

FOOD CORNER

Though I talked about a lot of foods, I think the most interesting was the Guava fruit.  This is nothing like what we are used to in the states...what we consider Guava is actually Guayaba.  Guava looks like a giant pea pod and holds white fruit that are furry on the outside yet have a very slimy texture.  There is a large brown seed in the middle that looks like a cockroach.  The fruit itself was mildy sweet and almost milky.  One was ok, but I couldn't bring myself to consume any more; I gave the rest to a little girl running around the market.  

Taste- 2

Aftertaste-1

AKWARD MOMENT

Now, I'm pretty used to being stared at here, being that a tall, fair, blonde American woman sticks out like prostitute in church,  however, this unwanted attention usually comes from overly aggressive men that think my pants will drop if they make kissy noises in my ear or yell "Ay Mami!!"  However, while biking around, children left and right were yelling and pointing "Gringa, Gringa!!"  This basically means, American, usually not offensive, but having so many children noticing me was, well......