We are chilling on the beach in Montanita, but let's start where I left off: Otovalo. It was so nice to get out of Quito!! We felt like we could breath again... Less pollution and less fear! People were extremely nice and helpful. We got there Friday night, went out for a nice dinner with some local, indigenous music played by a local band. I got llapingachos (a very typical dish for Ecuador) which is potato patties with meat, eggs and a salad, I should say it's really nice (in the picture)!The next morning, Saturday, the town filled with an amazing array of colors, crafts, smells, food, people and animals... You could buy pretty much anything that the indigenous and mestizo people make! Otovalo has a very high percentage of indigenous people, they basically run the biggest indigenous outdoor market in Ecuador. I went a bit crazy and got three rings... Two of them made out of the caw´s horn (check it out in one of the pictures, it's big and black, I love it!)! Ainius finally got a shark's tooth after bargaining with a guy on and off for a whole day :). It was really fun andwe spent most of the day "shopping".



The next day we decided to go to Cotocachi a little town 20 minutes away from Otovalo and to our surprise ended up in laguna Cuicocha where indigenous people were celebrating Inti Raymi or Solstice celebrations (Jonines). We took a pick up truck there and back, it was fun, but really cold! It seems that it involved getting drunk (pretty much completely hammered :)), dancing in circles and sacrificing fruit and chickens! We stayed there for a couple of hours, first took a boat road around the lake and then tried to make sense out of the rituals that were taking place there. After that we went back to Otovalo and decided to stay there one more night since we didn´t feel like going back to Quito. Monday we had no choice and went back to Quito to check whether our passports with visas arrived from the American embassy, alas no passports yet... We were told they might show up some time this week...



We met up with Josh and Jysea (Australian friends) and they were going to Montanita (a famouse beach for surfing), so we decided to go with them and left that night with a bus. 10 hours later (!) we were on the beach enjoying fresh juice, sun and surfing (I tried, but decided it´s too hard and just enjoyed staying on my belly on a board :), Ainius was much more serious about it and has tried to stand up for a whole day!). We´ll stay here for another night and then we are going on a tour to Isla de Plata or ¨poor man´s Galapagos¨, hopefully we´ll see some wales!!