From Cuenca we have we have come to Otavalo, two hours by bus north of Quito and still high in the Andes. The timing is not accidental. We are here on Saturday and at the end of our trip. Saturday is when Otavalo hosts one of the biggest and best markets in South America and we have come to shop!

Markets are important here. Even a small town will have a central covered market selling fruit, vegetables, rice, meat and other staples. Often they will have, what in the UK we would brand a 'food court', where you can buy a substantial lunch for just a couple of dollars. Otavalo is slightly unusual in that its market is in the open-air but it manages to put the Grainger Market in Newcastle to shame for the sheer quantity, quality and variety of fruit and vegetables on offer. Almost all of it is locally produced (with the exception of the apples which are imported from Chile). There are the things you would expect in a semi-tropical country: mounds of pineapples, great bunches of bright yellow bananas (and not just the one variety that we get), mangoes, guava, papaya, strange looking fruits that have no English name and, as we're in the Andes, many different types of corn and potatoes (Ecuador claims to have 400 varieties of the latter but not a patch on Peru, the home of the potato, which apparently has over 2,000). But there are also things you might not expect: huge bowls of raspberries and blackberries, which they use to make the delicious 'jugos de mora', a wheelbarrow loaded with strawberries, giant spring onions and great green florets of broccoli of which Ecuador is apparently a major producer and exporter (It also is a major exporter of roses).

Just next door is the textile market where they sell ordinary Ecuadorian clothes but in huge quantities. Great bales of t-shirts, jeans, stalls selling nothing but children's hats or gloves or socks and others sell different varieties of traditional clothing which people here seem to wear more than in other palces we've been. The commonest dress for women consists of elaborately embroidered blouses, long woolen skirts, sandals and gold-coloured necklaces. There are aslo men wearing all white with calf-length trousers. And all, of course, wearing hats that come in all shapes and sizes. Ecuador is a great country for hats!

But it is not for these markets that the tourists flock here. Otavalao is also the site of a huge handicraft market. Here all week, in the appropriately named Plaza de Poncho, on Saturdays it spills out into the neighbouring streets. Traders come in from the surrounding villages to sell a huge variety of products which can loosely be termed 'artisanal'. There are blankets, ponchos, alpaca jumpers, cushion covers, wall-hangings, carvings, tablecloths, hats, bags, pictures, jewellery in huge profusion. There must be hundreds of stalls all vying to sell not just to tourists but to local people as well (although, thankfully, the Ecuadorians do not go for the hard sell in the same way that, for example, we encountered in Peru and Mexico).

Of course it is all claimed to be 'handmade'. This despite the fact that the stall holder telling you this as he tries to persuade you to buy a wall-hanging has twelve identical ones on his stall and the stall next door just happens to have them for sale as well. (As you walk around Otavalo you can sometimes hear the clatter of mechanical looms from behind a high wall evidence of a small workshop churning out goods for next week's market.) But what do you expect for $10 when the genuine article will take a hand-weaver 4 days to produce and sell for $40? Whilst there are still genuine handmade articles to be had here, increasingly artisans appear to be selling direct from their workshop and/or through specialist shops where it is easier to be sure you are getting the genuine article and not a polyester scarf that someone is trying to pass off as genuine baby alpaca (the difference is obvious, believe me).

Bargaining is de rigeur, if something we find slightly awkward. No one expects to pay or be paid the first price quoted. Whilst bargaining is not conducted in the hysterical manner so funnily portrayed in Monty Python's 'The Life of Brian' ("HARRY THE HAGGLER: "Seventeen. My last word. I won't take a penny less, or strike me dead. BRIAN: Sixteen. HARRY THE HAGGLER: Done. Nice to do business with you".) it is a bit of a ritual to be gone through but not one to be taken to seriously. After all a few dollars means little to us but is a significant amount in a country where the average wage is less than $3 per hour.

But the prevalence of things which are perhaps not quite what they are presented to be does not take away from the genuine enjoyment to be had from strolling through the dazzling and colourful profusion of what is on offer, marvelling at the sheer industry evidenced here and wishing that a bit more of this fertile entrepreneurialism was displayed in markets in Britain.