I´ve just checked and it looks as though I last wrote on Sunday so this part will cover our time here from then until now, Tuesday early afternoon which is about 9 pm in England.
In the morning after breakfast all three of us came into Otavalo as Ros and Layla needed the ATM, Layla needed to be seen by a dentist and Ros wanted a suitcase like the one I bought plus to find the post office and buy stamps. The taxi dropped us off the the main square, Bolivar Park, which is next to the beautiful church where we saw the andean bride and groom leaving the church last Saturday. I cannot remember if I wrote about that or not, but it was lovely to see it, the bride was dressed in white dress just like us with a different head dress, the groom looked very smart and all the male guests were in white trousers and blue ponchos, the women mostly wearing Otavalo national dress. People threw confetti just like we do and there was a large crowd of interested spectators, many of them snapping photos too. Afterwards a series of trucks drove up and the younger people all piled in the back, and the older guests departed in a couple of buses provided for the purpose. It was after that that we had our Tilapia fish lunch and generally enjoyed Otavalo the rest of the afternoon.
Getting money from the ATM wasn´t an easy procedure. The maximum obtainable was 100 dollars, which I suppose is quite alot of money here. It took time getting out the amount needed at that rate (Layla and Ros needing to pay their bill at Casa Mojanda for the extras since we´ve been there). They have had massages, seen the shamen etc, and Ros went horse riding, all of which is quite expensive. I opted out of all that preferring to spend the money on CDs instead. After that we visited the dentist that Betty, our hostess, suggested and were lucky to be seen by the dentist straightaway. He checked over the tooth that had been aggravating her and confirmed that all was well. He wouldn´t take any money either and was such an old world gentleman that we were really impressed. And when we came out there were three young children sitting on the step and they had a chicken on a lead, the lead tethered to the chicken´s ankle, and we took photos of that too. The chicken was obviously a pet as he even let us stroke his head! I was really charmed by that, never having seen a chicken on a lead before. It´s little touches like this that make me love South America so much.
Next we went to get Rosalind´s suitcase and when we got there the man didn´t have any with wheels on and we had to wait while he ran up the road to his store. Whilst waiting Layla went in the shop next door and was soon chatting to the very friendly man who served her and when I joined him we were getting on great, finding out more useful info about Otavalo and when we told him we were hoping to meet andean bands, if lucky see some live music, he was able to help us. He got his brother in law from the shop next door again and introduced us and soon we were chatting away. They all live in Peguche and we have arranged to see them at 3 pm today and go to Peguche with them and meet his band.
When the taxi took us from Casa Mojanda into town yesterday we arranged for him to pick us up again at the same place he dropped us off, and take Layla and me to Peguche just to look around for a couple of hours. We also arranged for him to pick us up again there at 2.15 as Layla had to be back at Casa Mojanda by 3 pm for the Shaman ceremony which she was sharing the costs of with Rosalind. Rosalind wasn´t interested in going to Peguche and opted to go back to Casa Mojanda instead of coming with us. She loves it there so much she would rather be there than anywhere. She loves the four dogs, the llamas and horses, and the sheer majestic beauty of being in that lovely place nestled in the mountains.
One of the bands who live in Peguche is Nanda Manachi, and I have all their albums in my collection. I know the band are no longer together so was thinking that although it would be lovely to meet one of them whilst in Peguche, I had no hopes whatsoever of doing so. So when we got to Peguche, which is just a village, and the taxi driver pulled up and said ¨here is a workshop of andean instruments that you might like to take a look at¨and I looked over and saw the name ´Nanda Manachi´on the sign indicating it was a workshop, I nearly did a double take and couldn´t get out of the taxi quick enough. I quickly arranged for the taxi driver to pick us up in the central square by the church, and Layla and I headed into the workshop which was attached to a house. A young child playing in the courtyard said her dad wasn´t home and called her mother. Her mum was really friendly and said her husband was out and that he would be back shortly. She let us look around the workshop and the shop next to it, and when he hadn´t returned in 10 minutes we decided to go as we only had 2 hours to see the village. She explained that the band Nanda Manachi had long since disbanded but had formed a new group with mostly the same musicians and I ended up buying their 2007 CD and she said that if we had time we should pop back again so we could speak to her husband.
We set off up the road in the direction of the main square and little church and what struck us mostly was how friendly and nice the people were. Every person we passed wished us good day with a lovely friendly smile and little kids were saying either Hola or Hello depending on whether they knew any English. In a corner shop there were old people sitting outside having a chat, a woman sewing away on an outdoor sewing machine and they all smiled nicely as we stopped at the square and took photos of the church. It was lunchtime and Layla was hungry so we went into one of the two little restaurants and had a roast chicken lunch which was very cheap at only 5 dollars for the two of us without drinks.
As there wasn´t much else to see we headed back to the Nanda Manachi workshop in hopes that Jose Luis Pichanga would be there. On the way, on a corner, some children were having fun, one of them dressing up in a miniature sized Otavalo women´s costume. We were watching from across the road and taking a photo or two, when suddenly the whole outfit fell to the ground and the girl was standing there in her knickers! She saw us looking and laughed and asked if she could see the photos we had taken. As we approached all the children assembled in a pose and we took more pictures and they all crowded round to see the resultant pictures in Layla´s camera and seemed to be happy with that. None knew their address so that we could actually send the picture afterwards. These pictures are really cute as you will see later.
When we got to the workshop there was a man in the courtyard and when I explained that I was a Nanda Manachi fan from England and he went off calling his Father who appeared and was a really gracious gentleman and we chatted with him for about 15 minutes and he posed with us for photos and was generally such a nice man. He gave us each his business card with email address on and when I said I would write an email from England in September he was really pleased and said he would look forward to hear from me. Just at that moment a coach rolled up outside with a tour group leader and a coach load of students. They all filed in and sat on the seating and we were just about to slip away when Jose said ´please don´t go, why don´t you stay and watch the presentation´so we did and sat down with the others. He then proceeded to cut up a length of bamboo into lengths, using an existing set of panpipes on his lap as a guide to the length of each tube. Within 10 minutes he had made a set of pan pipes which he played for a moment and then put onto a pile of others (with me memorising exactly which one was the set he made in front of us). Then he picked up each of various other instruments and played a few bars on each one, tunes we would all recognise, including flute, charango, ocarinas etc. When he had finished two other musicians appeared and the three of them played a whole tune for us. Layla and I could not get over how lucky we were to be there at the right moment and witness all this. I had not even dared to hope that we might see a member of Nanda Manachi yet alone be received so graciously and then hear a tune played. We were both ecstatic and took loads of photos. Then we bought a set of panpipes each and said our goodbyes as we just had enough time to get back to the square where our taxi driver, Patricio was picking us up. We learned too that day that Patricio is the father of Christian, our taxi driver who drove us to the Condor Park on Sunday morning.
Back in Otavalo, Patricio dropped me off in Otavalo and then took Layla up to Casa Mojanda in plenty of time for the shamen session with Rosalind. I spent another few enjoyable hours in Otavalo town, including a tour of the market which continues just in the main square throughout the week, and at weekends extends for hundreds of yards in all the streets around it. The wednesday mid week market is also big, on a smaller scale than Saturday´s but much more than on other days. Tomorrow is our last day in Otavalo, and we are not planning to head back to Quito until the afternoon so that we can all enjoy one last tour around the Otavalo mid week market. Rosalind still wants to buy a few things to take back and Layla and I just love browsing.
In my visit yesterday I bought a dress because I was able to try it on over my clothes between some wall hangings the old lady had hanging up. The dress was of cream cheesecloth and beautifully embroidered by hand on the bodice and on the skirt part, both front and back, all done by hand, and the cost of the dress was just 20 dollars - an incredible 10 quid, which is amazing considering all the work involved in creating it. I was so glad it fit me and wore it that night for dinner. Also whilst browsing the market I found another 6 CDs, really good ones and original works. One of them is a gold collection of Nanda Manachi which was produced in 2005 and two of the others were CDs I have been looking for for a long time (one of them since 2003).
When I got back to Casa Mojanda just as dusk was falling, I met Ros and Laya coming up the path in their swimwear and draped in towels as both of them had been soaking in the hot tub since the shamen ceremony had finished. By this time we were the only three guests left at Casa Mojanda with new ones arriving this Thursday when we are no longer there - the next two weeks they are full of various groups of people. We went down to dinner at 7 pm and had coffee first chatting with Betty our hostess and Veronica who works for her. They put on music all evening and dined with us too and it was very pleasant in front of the roaring fire in the corner fireplace. At the end Betty played a really unusual CD of which there are only 10 copies left in existence and I just loved it because it is so different. This morning on my way into breakfast I stopped in the office, saw Veronica and bought a copy. So with this one that makes about 30 CDs I have bought so far.
This morning we had to be ready by 9 am as we´d arranged for Patricio to taxi us to the nearby town of Ibarra, about 23 Km away, which is the capital town of Imbabura Province. Before that, whilst waiting for the apple filled crepes to be made for our breakfast, Layla and I were out in the paddock beyond the kitchen having fun with the resident llamas, especially the one tethered called Samy. The ride to Ibarra was interesting and he pointed out places of interest along the way. Also we had woken up to a hot sunny morning and could see the tops of the volcanoes Cotacachi and Imbabura really clearly, the former snow capped. Normally the tops are shrouded in clouds. He dropped us off by La Iglesia de la Merced at 9.30 and arranged for him to come back for us at 2 pm to get us back to Otavalo.
We set off exploring and within half an hour we realised we hated Ibarra. The roads were busy, full of choking exhaust fumes from the passing traffic, the shops boring, the area almost looking industrial, people staring rudely rather than with open smiling faces like in Otavalo. We went to the huge central market called Amazonas and went inside and it was enormous but mostly selling meat, fruit,veg, livestock, and what clothing stores there were were really boring stuff, no artesania. Even the CD sellers looked askance at you when you asked for andean folkloric music. Even the lovely iglesia was closed so we couldn´t even look around that. In the end we just could not bear spending our last day in such an awful place and spotting a telephone booth shop on the opposite side of the road swiftly crossed, nearly getting run over in the process, as that was something else we hated about it too, none of the traffic giving any concession to pedestrians. If you forget and look the wrong way as they drive on the opposite side here, there could be an almighty SPLATT! if you are not careful.
In the shop we were able to look up the number for Casa Mojanda and ring Veronica and ask for Patricio to come back for us straightway. I rang back again 5 minutes later to check and she confirmed he was on his way and would be there by 11.30 and we were so glad. Also on the journey in each direccion he had brought the CD which he actually plays in, a CD called Kena y Rondador containing a selection of pascales, bomba music and san juanitos which was very nice to listen to as we drove along - especially the san juanitos which I adore. He played it on the way back too and when we realised it was only 5 dollars for an original CD with proper case and cover we both bought one from him for which he was very pleased. When we got back to Otavalo he dropped us by our favourite internet cafe, both of us really looking forward to first visiting the icecream parlour and coffee shop next door, only to find the shutters down on the Heladeria and we both groaned aloud. So we instead went into a tie dye shop that looked interesting, had a lovely chat with two guys who were running it,and then Layla spotted a cafe area in the inner courtyard and wanted to pop in there for lunch. It was the most delightful little courtyard you can imagine, quite small with just a few tables, completely surrounded with potted plants in every colour imaginable and all around above was a verandah also well bedecked with flowers, several cages hanging with different birds singing in them. Whilst Layla a shrimp stuffed avocado for her lunch and I had a beer, we were delighted to watch humming birds hovering and sipping from the various plants and even alight on a branch for minutes at a time. It was absolutely delightful. From there we are here in the internet cafe for an hour and then have to meet up with Jesus Campo, director of the group taking us to Peguche, at 3 pm. I will write about that when I write from Quito tomorrow night whilst we are waiting for the bus to arrive from Colombia, the one we are catching to take us from Ecuador to Peru.
