Welcome to Ecuador and the Otavalo Market

 The border between Colombia and Ecuador was hands down the easiest border we have ever crossed! There were hardly any lines, no weird offices and an official worker gave you the papers you needed at the start. Bliss.

Whooooo, Ecuador!

We had our first night in Otavalo, about 3 hours from the border. We didn't get in until about 9ish. We wandered around an empty town looking for food until finally we stumbled on a kebab shop. Amazing! The next day we were gone to get down to Quito, the capital of Ecuador, but on Saturday we made a day trip back up to go to the famous Otavalo Markets, one the largest outdoor markets in South America.

First we visited the animal market for locals who are looking to buy a new pig, cow or chicken. I wasn't sure if the rabbits and guinea pigs were being sold to restaurants or as pets (Alex: definitely food).

Then it was a breakfast break and into the shopping. I hate having to haggle but by the end of the day I was starting to get kind of used to it. It was a good, expensive day out but I've got the shopping bug out of my system for a while now.

The View from the Bus

Some Pigs for Sale

Alpaca! 

These little piggies went to market

We have no idea what this drink was, it was the consistency of whipped egg whites with the tang of slightly fermented lemon.  

Goods for Sale

Ja Ja Ja

The View of the Market from the Tequila Sumrice restaurant 

This is the most interesting and horrific presentation of crackling I've seen

Semana Santa in Popayan

Semana Santa (Easter Week) is BIG in Latin America as they are predominately Catholics. Easter in Latin America doesn't mean Easter Eggs or presents but it does mean a week off. Usually with big Latin American holidays the cities empty and everyone heads to smaller villages. This time we were prepared so we booked ahead to be in Popayan. 

Popayan is .... ok. There's not a whole lot to do there, a few museums, a small colonial city, a nice bridge to look at and a mirador (I wonder if they know this because their tourist information representatives were out in force trying to understand what it was you were doing there). However, it's one of the prime spots in Colombia for Semana Santa as well as being a UNESCO World Heritage site for Colombian food. 

Semana Santa seems to be mostly celebrated with different but similar processions throughout the week, starting from a different church each day. A procession seemed to vary from 2 hours to 4 hours, we usually only had enough of an attention span for about half an hour. The processions are made up of marching bands, police units, groups carrying what looked like very heavy statues of religious figures and everyday people with candles. Even with the average size of Colombians it was still hard to see much within a crowd so we headed back to the hostel to watch from the window. 

The Processions were being broadcast on TV

I had read that the processions would be creepy but this was about as close as it got

When Jesus came out there was a huge applaud from the crowd. The applause followed Jesus around as he made his way through the streets. It was a bit weird. 

Some tributes at alters near one of the churches

View of Popayan from the Mirador

The church on the main square with all the action. Our hostel was those windows on the left. 

I don't find Colombian food to be very good (not enough vegetables, too many deep friend pastries and huge portions of dry meat) so I was a bit confused by the UNESCO world heritage status. Turns out it's because in Popayan they've keep the traditional processes for making Colombian food. Our first attempt to find some nice food at a nice restaurant was a failure - a plate of mostly gross fried things. By the end of the week we managed to find a few winners.

Empanadas with a Peanut and Chilli sauce. They were amazing. 

Obleas - a Colombian version of Stroopwafles. Most people wouldn't put these in the winning category (and they don't hold a candle to stroopwafles) but I enjoyed mine. They are thin wafers with you're choice of filling - usually Jam, Caramel or Cheese. I had all three fillings. 

These have become one of my new favourtie fruits and they only come out around Easter Time. Granadillas are related to passion fruit and are super fun to eat. 

You crack them open like an egg and peel them to reveal the delicious goodness within. 

Close to the border of Ecuador, near Ipiales, there's one of the coolest churches I've seen. We stopped off on our border run between Popayan and Otavalo.

A wall of Acciones de Gracias plaques

One of the doors of the church

How often to you see a church that spans a gorge?

Desierto de la Tatacoa & San Agustin - Fake Deserts and Fun Statues

Desierto de la Tatacoa

I knew nothing about the Tatacoa Desert, only that I wanted to go there because the pictures looked pretty cool. Turns out it's a bit off the gringo trail, although it was packed with locals on break for Semana Santa, and isn't really a desert. It rained A LOT while we were there. It's not that much fun being in a desert while it's raining, there's not a lot you can do. We spent a lot of time hanging out in our tent reading. We stayed two nights and luckily on the second day the rain eased off enough that we got to go on a tour around the 'Grey Desert' as well as the 'Red Labyrinth'.

Cacti in the desert

This type of cactus bears one of my new favourite fruits - it looks like a pink chilli

On the inside it looks like a dragon fruit and it tastes delicious. 

It was crazy muddy walking around here

The Red Labyrinth 

It really was a beautiful part of the country

Grey Desert - not quite as striking as the red one

Someone has built a pool in the Grey Desert that is filled with a natural spring. It was quite a weird experience. There was also a man selling rum and raisin ice-cream. It was definitely a different experience to what I was expecting. 

I don't want to brag or anything but I want to note that our tours through the desert were only in Spanish and we understood about half of it! Although our guide did say he was speaking very simply because our Spanish is so bad!

San Agustin

San Agustin is an average little town but it's surrounded by amazing statues that were left behind by  pre-Hispanic peoples. There have been over 500 different statues discovered. Some have been moved around and placed in a museum but a lot of them are still out in the fields, if not in their original locations then close to them.

Our first day in San Agustin we went to the archaeological park which contains a museum and a lot of statues and burial mounds in their original positions.

The "Chocolate Mustache" on this guy indicates where he was buried up to when he was originally discovered. I think the sharp teeth make reference to Jaguars. 

This one is my favourite and has been adopted as the town's logo

This is an example of a tomb. A bit creepy. 

Our second day we had a 4 hour horse ride around the country side to see a few more archaeological sites. It's been a reaaaaaaallly long time since I've ridden a horse and possibly the first time for Alex. We both enjoyed it, even got a bit of a trot in. We were also predictably very sore the next day.

Our horses having a snack as we had a refreshing juice

This statue still has some of it's original colouring. Although a few years ago, for some reason, someone decided to repaint the whole statue, basically bright yellow. After some restoration work it's pretty much as good as old.  

Zona Cafetera: Salento - Coffee, hiking and tejo

So everyone knows one the the things that Colombia is most famous for is COFFEE! This pretty much means you can't come to Colombia without paying a visit to La Zona Cafetera - The Coffee Zone. I think Salento is pretty much the nicest town you can stay in if you're visiting Zona Cafetera. We had a great time there just chilling out, visiting a coffee farm, hiking through the Valle de Cocora and playing tejo.

Mirador from Salento of Valle de Cocora

Salento

The Coffee Tour

We went on a coffee tour on a 100 year old farm just outside Salento. It's currently owned by Tim, an Englishman who has been living in Salento for the past 11 years. The tour covered everything from the process of getting coffee from the plant to your cup to information about the local area. 

So what I can remember from the tour is that there are two types of coffee - arabica and robusta. Arabica is the best, it's got better flavour but less caffeine. Robusta, as the name suggests is stronger - less flavour, more caffeine. I think a lot of people make blends of arabica and robusta, trying to get the best of both worlds. So pretty much the best coffee you can buy is washed arabica (this means the country that produced it has enough drinkable water on hand to wash coffee). Colombia is currently the 4th biggest producer of coffee in the world and they only produce arabica. Most Colombian coffee farms are very small and can't support a supply to a specific cafe or chain so all their coffee gets mixed together and sold as one product. There are now modern coffee plants that have been genetically modified so they don't grow as big and are a bit tougher so you can plant them closer together. Traditional plants can end up getting quite big and are susceptible to more diseases. People are still growing a mix of these plants (although the government is trying to encourage everyone to grow the modern variety) and they all get mixed up together and sold as one because once they've been mixed you can't tell the difference. 

The general process of getting coffee from the plant to your cup is:

• Pick the cherries
• Use a machine to skin the cherries and separate the beans from the skin
• Soak the beans in water to get the sugar out (the beans are naturally sweet but if you left the sugar in it would turn bitter)
• Dry the beans (at this point you can plant the beans to grow more plants. This is the form that coffee gets moved around Colombia)
• Roast the beans
• Ground the beans
• Make the Coffee
• Drink the Coffee

Modern Coffee Plant

Traditional Coffee Plant

Coffee Cherries on the tree

What's inside a coffee cherry - they're nice to suck on because of the sugar

Roasting the beans the old school way. This is quite a skill. The darker you make the beans the stronger they become and the less of them you have to use to make coffee (but I think they also taste worse). Apparently this is a trick Starbucks uses to save money. 

Freshly Roasted Coffee Beans. These were then turned into the freshest coffee I will probably ever have. I am still not a coffee fan though so I was a bit sad I couldn't full appreciate it. Alex was loving it though.

Valle de Cocora

Salento is right next to Valle de Cocora, a beautiful valley full of wax palms that can grow up to 60m tall. We heard horror stories of people getting lost and attacked by bees but luckily we had a nice casual walk through the valley.

There were many river crossings on some dodgy bridges

There's a humming bird reserve along the way where your entrance fee scores you a free drink. We chose aguadepanela con queso - a hot drink made from cane sugar served with cheese. Another hot drink where you gotta dip your cheese.

The Humming Birds at this place were amazing. They had feeders out and they would bounce all around. 

There was also a family of Coatis hanging around. They are so used to people now that they come up to you. 

The view from La Montana. 

These cows don't know how lucky they have it

Wax Palms

Tejo

Tejo is a traditional Colombian sport that is amazing. Sadly I don't think we could ever get it past health and safety to bring it back to Australia. 

The general gist of the game is you throw your tejo, a metal puck (similar to a shot put) at a square of clay. The aim is to get your tejo in the middle of a metal ring. The twist is that little packets of gunpowder sit on the ring and if your tejo hits them in just the right way they explode! You get 3 points for an explosion, 6 points if you're in the ring and 9 points if you're in the ring and you got an explosion. 

The other main rule of the game is that you have to be drinking the whole time. You don't pay to use the court, you just pay the for beers you drink. As novices we didn't stand that far back from the clay but we watched increasingly drunk locals log these chunks of metal across the room (well over 10m!) with surprising accuracy. 

Apologies for the Potato Quality. 

This is what you're aiming for

Our exploded gunpowder triangles

I hope you have found this post entertainingly educational and not dryly boring.