This was the day we’d planned to go to the ‘weekly fiesta that celebrates the gods of commerce’ a.k.a. Otavalo market, but, stupidly, forgot that it was Carnival weekend. The day was a total let down, starting with the six a.m. alarm. Our first poor decision was to ignore the Lonely Planet, which said we had to get a bus from the South terminal (which is miles in the opposite direction) and follow Lisa’s advice, which was to ask a taxi driver to take us to a stop along the way and flag down a passing bus from there. We did try to take this advice, but we soon realised that the taxi driver (who clearly had no idea what we’d asked him, but pretended he had anyway) was trying to take us to the north station, which would have cost us a fortune so we hopped out and decided to ask the woman at the Metrobus station, who said that we should head to the north station and get a bus to another location and change for Otavalo. Not knowing what else to do and with time ticking on, we got the Metrobus to the north terminal only to find that there was no bus to this place we were supposed to go. Luckily, a kind English-speaking guy overheard us enquiring and said we could get on the bus he was on to the other station from which we could catch a bus to Otavalo. So, we jumped on and travelled to this other station where there were a number of buses marked ‘Otavalo’. Relieved that we’d made it to the right place, we asked a guard which bus we should get on, the response to which was a finger pointing to a queue approximately 25 metres long. We could have queued, but it was already 9.30am and by the time we’d journeyed the two hours there, the market would have been finished. Gutted and a little poorer, we headed back to Quito attempting to console ourselves on the way that there would likely be much better markets in Cuenca. Who wants soft, handmade alpaca mittens anyway…
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