Ecuador Day 2 Otavalo

We had breakfast at the hotel where we had spent the night. 

I managed to remember to take a picture of Emily and Keiran today. 

After breakfast we got an Uber and had a wild ride to Otavalo. Since Kerian is the only one that can speak Spanish, he sat up front to talk to the driver.

Once in Otavalo we dropped all of our bags at a hotel Emily and Kerian had stayed at before. After the luggage was secured we went shopping.

There was lots to see and it was very difficult to pick out things because I liked everything.  I think that I bought too much and now will have to check a bag on the way home. Either that or we will be leaving other stuff behind.

I did make a few selections and the shop keepers all let me take their pictures where I bought things. Kerian did most of the negotiating but a few spoke English so I delt with them myself. 

It was a very hectic time because Emily had us on a schedule to try to get to the reserve before dark. 

We had a nice lunch which included some delicious fresh passion fruit juice. 

 There were a few final purchases,

then we picked up our bags, 

and got in a taxi for the 3 hour ride to Mindo.

Town was very crowded and loud because there was some sort of important soccer game being played and the national team won. There was lots of excitement and celebration. 
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Meanwhile, there were groceries to buy and another taxi to take to the reserve. 

It was dark by the time we got there. Emily was not able to keep me on schedule. 

Then came the quarter mile hike to the lodge that included this swinging bridge crossing with only our headlamps.  I will let you see just what we were crossing later.  There had been a lot of rain and Emily was afraid that their water would be out. And guess what, it was. So no water for showers and only a little for drinking at least until the next morning when we would be able to hike to the water source and fix it.

We snacked for dinner. 

I modeled one of my purchases before bed.

I’ll

And this was bed, taken the next day because it was dark and there were no lights upstairs.  There are also no walls upstairs.  But we were tired so we figured out how to crawl in under the mosquito net and went to sleep. At least until Joe woke me up saying this had crawled across his neck. 

It was a giant millipede. I’m not to sure either of us got much sleep after that.