Two More Weeks In Otavalo

Hello! Well, I´m back in Otavalo after one full day of relaxation on the La Luna farm. I literally did nothing but write in my journal, read my book, talk with fellow travelers and the hostel owners, and eat a home cooked meal full of vegetables and other goods we purchased at the market on Saturday. It´s great to have no agenda, it feels very freeing to not quite know what we will be up to tomorrow or the next day. Although having said that, Brad and I have decided to commit to 2 full weeks of working at La Luna. There has been a couple helping out but they are leaving tomorrow so we thought we would ask if they need more help and the owner, Kevin, agreed to let us work in exchange for room and board. Since it is the off season here in Ecuador, there are very few occupants in the rooms and no reservations on the books so our job basically consists of hanging out around the farm from 8-11 each morning and then again from 6-10 at night to help out with serving and sometimes preparing food and keeping track of people´s expenses. We get to eat any of the food we want and we will move into an upstairs room with a carpet, a fireplace, and a balcony that has a hammock on it! I am very excited for this opportunity. It will give us a chance to do a lot of the hiking around Otavalo as our schedule is pretty flexible and Kevin will likely give us a few days to sight see in the area. We will also get by spending very little money although I will have to restrain myself from buying tons of beautiful crafts at the Saturday markets in town! And speaking of Saturday market, we wrote our last posts before we had made any purchases but by the end of the market we had an extensive array of fruits and vegetables, many of which I had not tasted or even heard of before. For a grand total of $5.00 we bought 1 pineapple, 5 bananas, 2 oranges, 2 guayabanas, 1 tomato, 6 apples, 3 red onions, 15 hot peppers, 1 lime, 1 huge avocado, 1 grapefruit, 2 heads of broccoli, 1 pepino (a sweet fruit with a taste between a mango and a pear), 1 unknown fruit with slimy seeds, 1 quarter pound of quinoa, and 3 bagel-like bread things! Since Ecuador uses the dollar no conversion was necessary to see how much produce we got for the amount of money we spent.
Not much more news to report so I will stop here.
Hope everyone is doing well! We love hearing your comments and getting your emails!

Chao,
Anika