I kept on discovering Quito at the beginning of the week, and took spanish lessons aswell. Thursday morning I took an early bus up to a town called Otavalo, a very good time to leave Quito as it turned out. Otavalo is well know for it's (saturday) market, but there are also nice places to go to in the surrounding, for example the Cascade de Peguche (waterfall) or the Laguna Cuicocha, a crater lake. Well, on saturday we went down to town early, but the market was in full swing already. We went to the animal market first, were you could buy pigs, chicken, cows, guinea pigs and many other animals. It was interesting to watch the local people: A vendor trying to convince an old couple to buy on of his pigs, women standing close to each other, negotiating about the prices in a very quiet and subliminal way, a man puting a shreeking pig in a bag... but not only the animal market was crowded, the whole city had turned into a huge beehive, on most of the streets there were stands, people selling and buying fruits, veggies, shoes, clothes - and at the central place -the plaza de ponchos- locals were selling beautiful handicrafts and textiles, but as those were things to be bought by tourists only, this place was rather deserted while the other streets and places were thriving and bursting with life.