Our Great Adventure: Otavalo Day 303 18/07/2015

We had breakfast at the hostel and walked down the main street to drop our laundry off. We left it with young girl who must have been at most 10 who stuck a label on our bag of washing, 'Simon'. No ticket or anything and Diane was some what sceptical that it would be there when we went back at 1600, the time she said it would be ready. Simon was more trusting it would! The artesian market had overflowed into the streets surrounding Plaza de los Ponchos. We walked to the morning food market which is interesting to see although the meat section makes you seriously consider being a vegetarian. All in all not that impressive. Maybe we've just seen too many markets recently! We stopped off for a coffee before getting a taxi to El Lechero, a sacred tree that is apparently important place for purification rituals. The significance of which was lost a little bit on us but you got good views of San Pablo Lake and the slopes of the surrounding volcanos, Imbabaru and Fuya Fuya with cloud shrouding the summits. You could also see large areas of greenhouses in the surrounding valleys. A large proportion of the cut flowers on sale in North America and Europes are grown in Ecuador. Despite the long transportation costs, the low wages and continued use of pesticides make it viable. The implications of the conditions on the health of workers continues to be an issue. When we visited in 2003/04 Ecuador's GDP was lower than its interest payments to US. Even if it has improved you can't image that it's significantly better and it needs to generate revenue some how. We walked back into town, followed by dog who Simon named as white socks. He followed us all the way in town and left us in the main square. We walked through town back to the nice coffee shop for a late lunch. We headed back to the hostel, spotting white socks on route and spent the remainder of the afternoon chilling out before going to collect our laundry which despite Diane's scepticism was all there, spotting two socks again as we walked back. In the evening we had dinner at Arbol de Montalvo which is located on the ground floor of our hostel, an enjoyable traditional meal to celebrate our last night in Ecuador. Up early tomorrow for our travels to Colombia!