Otavalo was our first stop in Ecaudor, reached after 30 hours solid on some of the windiest roads imaginable from Bogota. Our reason for hammering it so fast to get there was to reach the town before saturday, when the town is home to one of the most important markets in South America.

We made it, and it was great! Arising bright and early we dragged our sleepy bodies towards the early morning animal market. For anybody with a few dollars in their pockets there were all manner of farm and domestic animals for sale; puppies, kittens, rabbits, guinea pigs, goats, turkeys, chickens, pigs, sheep, cows in all shapes and sizes roaming around a small field being chased by sellers, held aloft, or more often, thrust into our faces for inspection! Many times we had to politely decline a turkey being held inches from our noses. Pens and crates arent present here - any animal purchased was either stuffed into a sack or dragged around on a piece of string. It was utter chaos, we gave up trying to manouvre through the crowds of women carrying chickens, and retired to a bank to watch the people attempt to get thier new animals into their vans. We never knew piglets could squeal quite so loud, the noise towards the end of the market was utterly deafening. We sadly didnt buy anything, but it was only due to Kate´s insistence that i was an idiot that prevented me from purchasing a puppy for ten dollars.

For the rest of the day we ambled around the rest of the town, all overtaken with stalls and roaming sellers. We tried all manner of exotic fruits and some tasty chunks carved from a roasting pig, but drew the line at live snails served in a plastic bag with some lettuce. Perhaps another time.

On sunday we decided to hire a couple of mountain bikes, hoping for a fun day exploring the countryside. We got rather a lot more than we bargained for, as my bike was not only child size, but the back wheel was buckled, the brakes jammed at random intervals, and only four of the gears worked. We did manage to find the waterfalls we were looking for, which where spectacular, especially when we clambered over the slippery rocks and stood in the full force of the spray, getting soaked from head to toe in no less than ten seconds. The rest of the day however, was mostly spent heaving with all our might (which isnt much at the moment due to a month lounging around on beaches and in cities) to compete with the altitude, the hills, and the worst bikes ever made. We wound through countless little indigenous villages, where the people were extremely friendly, but the dogs werent (we had several near misses and only just managed to escape with our ankles intact), and by the end of the day we had got lost twice, cycled at least 20 kilometres, and could barely breathe for the majority of the time.

Monday we went on a hike to different part of the countryside, to a place called Parque Condor, to see some of the biggest birds in the world. We saw several Andean Condors (one of which showed a rather alarming amount of interest in us, we were very grateful to the mesh keeping us safe at this point although it did seem a little unfair to keep such amazing birds from flying off into the andes where they belong), an amazing Harpy Eagle completely destroying a whole chicken, and lots of hawks and owls. Lying through our teeth to the locals on the way home who wanted to know if we had been to visit their sacred tree up a hill (our rumbling stomachs and burning necks prevented us from bothering, so we just smiled politely and agreed that it was indeed muchos bonito) we made it back to our hostel and spent the rest of the day planning the rest of our adventures in Ecaudor.

We are now in Quito, a disgusting tourist trap (we might as well be in england for all the pubs, sandwich shops and wine bars), which we are pleased to be leaving tomorrow, as we are heading to the Amazon Basin.