Mike drank slug juice

WOW. Otavalo and the market is everything you would imagine. We went straight to the animal market at 7:30 because it closes the earliest and were greeted by hoards of Otovaleños with their live animals for sale. Everyone just stands around with their pigs on the end of a rope or holding their live chickens upside-down, or pulling guinnea pigs out of a sack. It was so crazy down there but really awesome. The Otovaleños wear a very traditional and formal dress, even when they are holding a muddy lamb in their laps: dark woolen skirts with beautiful embroidery, a ruffled white blouse with colorful flowers embroidered on the collar, their long dark hair pulled into a long braid wrapped with a colorful strap (men and women) and topped with a Panama Hat which is actually from Ecuador.

We then headed to the food market where we met this American guy who is now a tour guide for Baby Boomers in Peru. He had Mike try this drink called "emoliente" which is this crazy concoction a lady makes right in front of you: first she scrapes into a glass jar tons of slimy aloe vera from the inside of a leaf, then adds a little of liquid from about 10 different unmarked bottles that are various sugar concoctions and vitamins, then a little mollasses. Then she pours it back and forth into a tin cup as it slowly distributes the slimy aloe throughout the whole drink so by the end it resembles a thick snot (sorry). She hands it to mike in a giant jar and instructs him to drink it chug it without stopping or he´ll choke on the semi-liquid stuff that´s already halfway down his throat. He did it perfectly, of course, and acually said he like it! I of course opted to take pictures of it instead. Anyways, there was a huge textile market, fruit market, anything you could imagine and it stretched throughout the whole city. It was incredible.

Somehow we did all that and it was only 11:00am so we hopped on a bus to this tiny town called Quiroga where we were told to hitch a ride to a crater...so we climbed into the back of this guys truck and watched the mountains and volcanoes and villagers pass us by. We arrived at this huge lake inside a crater called Cuicocha, had a great lunch and then right as we were going to start the hike around the lake our Spanish friend Lidia pulls up in the back of a truck, hops out and joins us! Small world. The hike was beautiful and she entertained us with her dirty spanish vocabulary and stories about all her travels through Asia, Africa, Midde East, Europe, and now New Zealand where she is living. Mom... she was ashamed that the spanish I learned from you was so clean... she´s trying to remedy that.

Anyways, we´re in a cafe trying to plan some of our upcoming trip but I wanted to tell you about this great day while it is still fresh in my mind. I am loving it so far and and SO thankful to you mom for teaching me spanish because I don´t know how people get by here without it. I´ll post pics soon when the stupid connection works! I miss you so much, familia. And our friends who are out on travels of their own (ie: nick-- so jealous of your trip), hope you are having a blast.