Otavalo Market is a very colourful market specialising in textiles.
At about 3.30pm on day 2 we arrived at the Otavalo market we only spent about half an hour at this market as we had been more interested in the nature reserve and waterfall than shopping. It was very interesting seeing the local ladies selling the clothes and table clothes, a lot were made from Alpaca wool which made them very soft.
I bought some lovely hats for my 2 young boys a monkey one and a lion one and a silk scarf for my daughter. The unfortunate thing was that everywhere you went on the market you could not browse as you were hassled by the sellers even though they did not speak English,I did do a bit of haggling which I don’t really like doing but the prices they started off at it were so high it was obvious they wanted you to haggle.
We then went a couple of blocks away to the local fruit and vegetable market that was a lot more interesting and colourful fruits that I had never seen before and the passion fruits were huge. I was really interested in buying a tree tomato but was told the skin was quite tough and I would need a knife to cut it open which I did not have. I was also quite surprised that they grow very similar vegetables to in the uk even though the climate is very different, they had lots of broccoli which they export a lot of, they also grew carrots and cabbages.
The ladies wore traditional dress which comprised of a white blouse with embroidery on the sleeves and front with a skirt colour which depending on which area of Quito you .
