After breakfast at the Cayman Hotel, we took a taxi to the Terminal Carcelen in the north of Quito for $12. It was a 20 or 30 minute ride. Taxis are very cheap in Ecuador.
At the terminal, there were at least a dozen different bus companies but we knew the one we wanted from our research at latinbus.com. That's a very good web site for bus schedules in Ecuador. We bought tickets for $2.25 each. Bus travel in Ecuador is usually about $1 per person per hour of travel. The drivers' helpers all shout out the name of the town where their bus is going, so although the terminal is big and chaotic, it's not hard to find the right bus. For a little over 2 hours, we traveled north along a winding but good, new highway to Otavalo, enjoying the high sierra scenery. Once in Otavalo, we got a taxi for $1 to take us to our hotel, the Dona Esther. We're always careful to negotiate the taxi price before we get in. It doesn't take long to figure out the price that we consider reasonable. That's not to say that we're not paying more than we should a lot of times. We don't mind getting ripped off a little bit; we just don't want to be treated like total gringo assholes.
We checked into the Dona Esther with no problem. Most hotels here want cash, not credit card, so we're always careful to have enough cash in our body safes or hidden pockets, next to our skin, along with our passports and credit cards. Nobody's getting our important stuff without a knife or a gun. So far, in all our travels, we've turned down lots of scams but have never experienced the threat of a violent attack. However, we try to be wary travelers.
The Dona Esther has atmosphere to spare. The rooms are all entered through a balcony surrounding a courtyard. The walls are stucco and the floors are wood. The rooms are a bit dark but that's okay.
After we settled in, we went for a walk around town, looking for the restaurants in our guidebooks. We found most of them. Since it was lunchtime and we were hungry, we went to a small restaurant that we never heard of but it seemed to have lots of local people eating there. In Ecuador, many small restaurants have set menus for breakfast and lunch that are very cheap. We paid $3 each for soup, fruit juice, chicken, salad and fries. We were so full that we bought mangos and some pastries that we took back to our room, and didn't bother going to a restaurant for dinner.
In the afternoon, we spent about an hour sitting on a bench in the town square, just watching the people. In Otavalo, there are mostly indigenous people, Quichua, I think, who have been here since before the Incas and the Spaniards. The women, especially, wear traditional long skirts, embroidered white blouses and carry infants wrapped in a shawl or blanket tied on their backs. It seems that there is a baby boom on in Otavalo. There are infants everywhere. The younger men mostly wear modern clothing. The older men are often immaculately dressed in white shirt, white calf length pants and dark blue poncho, and black fedora. Everyone has long black hair, usually in a braid that often reaches their waist. The schoolchildren are all in neat uniforms and even the little boys have long braided hair. Generally, everyone looks prosperous and proud. The weaving industry here has provided a good income, it seems.
We're careful in cities not to be out in unfamiliar areas after dark. Since Ecuador, being on the equator, has within 9 minutes of 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of dark all year long, we mainly relax in our room in the evenings and go to bed early. Besides that, the roosters and traffic are almost guaranteed to wake us at 5 am in most places. Again, we're used to this from travel in other developing countries. Luckily, if we feel like vegging in our room, we get Netflix on our ipad as part of our subscription at home. This may not sound too exotic but it suits us.
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