A lot happened in Otavalo. Our dog died, I fainted, I bought a few things, bad surgery was performed, and all in all, it was a pretty dramatic and stressful week. Otavalo has a major market that sells things that tourist typically buy, like jackets and blankets and low quality instruments and marijuana cream. The people all wear shawls and ponchos which adds a very authentic atmosphere. We visited a few shops that were outside of the extremely large and vacant seeming market, one of the paces we went was a wool works shop. Everything there was semi expensive and we left without buying anything. Next we headed to this music shop where they make Andean instruments for selling. I bought this flute like thing called a quena and a pan flute like thing called a rondador. I still can hardly play my quena but my pan flute and randador playing has gotten better. We adopted a stray dog and took both her and our remaining male dog to get fixed. The vet who did the job wasn’t very good at neutering animals or giving stitches. I’m a gentle man and the whole thing caused me to faint a little bit, but the vet had a nice wife and daughter who gave me some chamomile tea and took me to their plastic surgery office so I could lie down on their operating table. Our dog is still recovering and has a massive gash on his swim suit area.
We finally left Otavalo and headed towards the town of Banos. Banos is Spanish for bath or bathroom and the town was named this because it was built on a volcano and had several hot springs. We camped outside of a small restaurant that had a few, kind of big spiders on the ground and in the shrubbery. I was slightly disappointed with the public baths, they were extremely developed and were built into pools, plus they were full of the elderly. Banos had a lot of this drink made out of some kind of cane plant. I really wanted some but it probably had alcohol in it so I never got to taste it. One time, during our stay in Banos, I bought lunch inside a giant food building where people would set up small restaurants. I got rice with and egg on top plus a little bit of pork meat.

South America, or at least Ecuador and Colombia, have a really nice attitude towards hitchhikers. People hitchhike everywhere. You don’t even have to put your thumb out you just have to stand on the side of the road and you get picked up. Everyone hitchhikes. Someday, I’m going to come back and hitchhike all over South America.
Right now we’re outside of Cuenca at a gas station. I’m leaving now. Bye.