Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Day 3: Hot springs and Markets



Well, we woke up to a great wakeup call via Dogs barking and roosters crowing; it was fine for me. (I sleep like a rock until around 7:00am)My sister is a light sleeper so when those animals started going at 4am, she wasn’t too happy about it. Oh well it was a good or early start to the day.

For breakfast this morning I decided to be adventurous and I tried a new fruit I have never seen before. It was something similar to  a tomato on the outside but it had a hard shell you had to crack open, then the insides were grey gooey seeds. It was really crunchy and slimy to eat, but overall unique and sweet.

We headed out and our first stop was the Paguche Waterfall, it was a bit of a hike. Nothing crazy and the path itself was paved with cobblestones. But it was lined with Eucalyptis trees, smelled great and it was a beautiful clear day. When we got to the waterfall, it was nice and we got to get up close to it; the thing that stood out to me was the signs though. The word for ‘look out spot’ was Moridar. But in my juvenile mind I saw Moridor. I was back in the Lord of the Rings universe and that just made me giddy. Hehe. We hiked around the waterfall for a while and just enjoyed the scenery. Then we headed back to the bus passing an ancient sun dial which was the size of a small hut.


We then drove to Otavalo, which had the biggest outdoor market and which is known for this market. So naturally we went shopping. We bought rugs, blankets, shirts, bowls, chess sets, nativities, hair accessories, pillow covers…I’m going to stop their cause I don’t really want everyone to know how carried away we got. What, the bargains were awesome, mainly because we could bargain with them. I got most of the stuff down to close to half price on all the stuff I bought. (Actually, I only spent around $100 on souvenirs for most of the trip, prices were that good!)

After Otavalo, (my parents were the last to get on the bus J ) we headed over to Catacachi, which is a town known for their leather items. Thankfully we didn’t go as crazy as we did in the market but Dad did get a new wallet and I found a leather shawl. There were a ton of cow hide rugs and I wanted to get one but sadly there would be no way for me to fit one of those into my luggage.

To the next hotel, and it again was placed in little cabins. This place however was a hotsprings site. The hotel was called Termis Papallacta and it was nice. There were little pools of hot water outside our rooms which we could go to anytime we wanted. We however signed up to the packaged deel where we got our own personal hotsprings pool, they were hotter than the other small pools and then they brought us to a steam room. It was a small room with a hot waterfall  at the end of the room which had bows or eucalyptus leaves on shelves in the water. So it was hot steamie and smelled divine. They left us in there for about 20 minutes which was so nice but near the end it was really hot. Kinda hard to breath but all is well cause after that they brought us into a thirty minute massage. That was so good! I felt so spoiled and wondered if this was like how the rich people lived. It was so nice.


After the massage, we went to dinner. The place wanted to give us a free glass of wine but none of us drink so instead they brought us a unique juice mix, it was blackbearry juice mixed with this white milky stuff that was sour but sweet at the same time, all I know is that it was good. I also had trout again for dinner. Yay fish!

We headed to bed after that and somehow I was the only one who got a comfortable bed this time around. I was pretty lucky. 

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