Nathan's Insights

Saturday 07 December 2024
Highlights: Otavalo Handicrafts Market, Peguche Community Home organic lunch, Peguche Waterfall

We were off on our Ecuador Amazon and Volcanoes tour with an early morning start to Otavalo. We meet the rest of the group before boarding our bus for the next week.

Our tour is led by; Chief Experience Officer (CEO) Angeles, with 12 tour members; Ashlie, Casey, Brian, John, Tito, Mariam, Cathy, Greg, John, Robert, Erin and myself.

We drove to the Otavalo Handicrafts Saturday Market. Being so close to Christmas the market was filled with vendors and customers. Most of the items for sale were created in this region. Erin purchased some earrings plus a surprise gift while I got my Ecuador fridge magnet.

From the market, we drove to Peguche Community Home for our lunch. The matron of the house explained how items were cooked and took us to her garden highlighting items we would be having for lunch. We good to smell a lot of the plants and taste some of the fruits and leaves. 

Next up was a drive to the Peguche Waterfall. After a short walk, we arrived at a beautiful waterfall. It then commenced raining. Luckily Angeles had recommended we bring our rain jackets for the 15-minute plus walk they were needed. 

We then arrived at our hotel and gorgeous estate dating back three centuries. After we got into our rooms, dried off and changed our clothes we went to a welcome event for all guests. We enjoyed a local band playing music and tried a pastry and some alcohol. Erin also tried the local coffee.

We had dinner at the estate and later retired to our rooms while it still raining. Tonight instead of having a party outside our window we went to sleep with frog noises 🙂