We're returning from our trip to Otavalo, on the center's bus going through rolling county side, cows and chickens off to the side.
Otavalo was a quick trip for the purpose of shopping at their open market but more specifically to support the local artisans and craftspeople.  
We bought many items for ourselves, friends, family, and the church. The beauty and soft textures of the scarves, sweaters, and other linens was astounding. The center had pre-arranged for a shopkeeper to meet us and had "mostly" pre-arranged prices for us.  

She was very friendly and spoke just enough English to make things easy. If she didn't have the correct size or she thought we wanted more selection she or her husband would leave and then magically appear with another arm full of items. When we had completed our purchases there, the shopkeeper insisted that we leave our items there.  The shop keeper had all of our purchases waiting for us on the bus.

We continued our browsing through some of the other stalls, finding unique local items. The people seemed really nice, some even spoke a few words of English. 

Our return trip took about an hour and a half and I would like to thank our driver Oswaldo who treated us to some locally made biscuits (not quite as sweet as a cookie) and some very good cheese, kind of small curd, salty, mozzarella.

I am very happy to be here.
Terence Throm