Otavalo, Ecuador

Arriving from Colombia it was certainly a big change being in Otavalo. The look of the people was different and unique, as there are many more indigenous people living in the area. Many are very short, some barely over four feet tall, and they were often hunched over carrying something on their backs, be it a baby wrapped up in a sheet, or large sacks of wool goods or other crafts. Perhaps it is due to the environmental conditions but many looked so old, like gnarled bundles of durable humanity, covered in wrinkles forged over the years. I arrived on a Tuesday night and this allowed for plenty of time to see the town during the mid-week gaps between the popular Saturday markets, renowned to be one among the best in South America. These weekdays revealed the real Otavalo, authentic and less tarnished by tourism.

During the week, two components of the Saturday market still operate, though to a smaller extent. The artisans bring their goods to the main plaza and there are still daily produce and food markets. To me the selection seemed similar for many items, but others were only found on Saturdays. There is a large selection of wool goods, made from alpaca, as well as colorful hats, rugs, and others trinkets. I bought a few things and during the week it was a very relaxed atmosphere, which was nice. On Friday when I walked through the artisan market toward the end of the day, I talked to one of the women selling things and we had this exchange, translated from Spanish:

It´s very nice, but I´m going to come back tomorrow.

Because tomorrow there will be many tourists.

Very clever I thought, although I still didn´t buy the scarf; I had already bought another one anyways. She was right, all the vendors did raise their prices on Saturday, although there was plenty of room for bargaining, especially since there were so many stalls selling similar things.

The produce market was a entirely different. There were stalls with all sorts of fruits and vegetables along the one entranceway to the market, including a few strange fruits like the long thin green fruit, that I had never seen before. I asked the vendor how you eat the fruit, and so he got out his knife and showed me, to some laughter from the few locals standing around. You have to split the fruit open on the narrow side and then there are these series of fleshy white pods that surround a black pit, a pretty mild tasting fruit, but quite good, and the unopened fruit can double as a weapon too. Upon further research, this fruit appears to be called guaba and is entirely different from the similarly sounding guava (in English).

Another amazing part of this market was the large number of different soups that were being made and served. One woman was making a massive pot of soup that was big enough for me to fit inside, I asked her if I could try some and she pulled out the large ladle and gave me a spoon. It tasted good, perhaps some type of a type of chicken soup, so I ordered a bowl; there were definitely a few chicken hearts floating around in my soup. I had another soup that was made from potatoes and cheese with some finely diced pieces of chicken heart, liver, stomach, and intestines.

The most impressive feature of the market was the meat section; impressive and nauseating. There were tables with freshly decapitated goat heads, skinned pig heads, and many large bins of an assortment of organs: intestines, livers, stomach linings, kidneys; you name it and it was there. Unfortunately I wasn´t able to a picture of the big bucket of cow hearts, because they whisked them away when I took out my camera and said that I needed to buy them if I wanted to take a picture. I really didn´t know what to do with $5 worth of cow hearts so I was forced to pass on this offer. There were also these big bowls of jellied fat as well as loosely folded up bundles of animal skin, with the fatty tissue side up. The worst part was probably the cumulative smell, a mixture of wet dead animals, meat, organs, and fat, all of which had come to rest at room temperature with persistent flies in the air. Not an environment for vegetarians or the faint of heart.

On Saturday, the town transforms into a massive marketplace, with artisan vendors filling most of the streets and straining the town´s transportation system. In addition to the two previously mentioned markets there is also a livestock market and a small animal market. The livestock market is held slightly outside of town and people bring their cows, pigs, horses, and goats to sell. For me, the livestock market wasn´t nearly as interesting as the small animal market. The small animal market featured people selling guinea pigs, a local delicacy, as well as ducks, lots of chickens, geese, turkeys, snails, rabbits, and dogs and cats (as pets I presume). It was really the sheer variety of animals in such close proximity that made it interesting; there were puppies briefly escaping only to run into baby chickens or ducks with equal looks of bewilderment. One vendor might be selling something like one duck, four chickens, a turkey, and some guinea pigs, all together in the same pen. There were definitely lots of chickens bought and sold with the birds being toted around upside down by their legs or thrown into sacks along with other small creatures.

The market day was at least colorful and varied, but the downside was the massive tourist presence. This had totally transformed the town, now I could see why there were at least a dozen pizza places, which for some reason is like a gourmet food. For me, it was just as interesting to watch the vendors break down their make-shift stalls at the end of the day and pack up all their stuff, folding items intricately and re-packing them into large sacks or bins, then pulling apart the metal supports and wooden benches before loading it all into trucks. As the day wore on, the crowds thinned out and many people left town the same day they arrived, leaving behind trash strewn streets and a much more tranquil Otavalo, setting the stage for one of the town´s Saturday night activities, the cock fight.

Sometimes they say that life is stranger than fiction. As I stood outside the bathroom next to the cock fighting pit looking at newspaper clippings and talking to a man about his friend in the photos, who of happens to be a world champion speed walker at multiple distances, and how he trains in the high altitude mountains outside of Otavalo, I was reminded of how true that is.

But perhaps such is one´s trip to see a cock fight, especially the one in Otavalo. After confirming the location of the pit with two locals, I was given conflicting starting times and was forced to check at each time because so as to secure a good seat. I waited as the market wound down and the mass exodus from town had commenced with all the sellers packing up their wares and leaving.

I wasn´t too sure what the refreshments situation would be like at the cock fight, whether it would be like sporting events in the United States where they have hot dogs, nachos, popcorn, and beer and soda, perhaps even chicken fingers in this case, or whether it would be more of a bring your own type of event. With some other travelers we showed up with a few beers and snacks but the building still wasn´t open so we decided to go hang out in the park and check back an hour later. Again it was still closed. Another hour passed by and still nothing. This brought me to the discussion with the man outside the bathroom about speed walking and the mountains and he informed me that I should come back in an hour and that the event would start then. He seemed to know what he was talking about so after waiting another hour we returned and the whole area was deserted, save for a few people loitering around. This time we decided to go play pool at a tiny local bar that had been filled with Ecuadoreans all week long.

When we walked in, everything stopped inside for a second or two as people turned to look at us. After getting a table, one of the three, we were lucky enough to get a complete set of balls. The other tables were missing at least a few each. We tried to rack the balls with one of the two wooden triangles but strangely they were both different sizes. More strangely neither one fit all the balls. I found this rather ironic that in a town famous for its artisans, that they couldn´t get someone to make a wooden triangle. Nonetheless it was fun and it helped to pass yet another hour. This time when we returned to the cock fighting pit the building was open and there were a few people milling around the place but it was still pretty dull and mostly filled with other tourists.

A short while later more people entered, some of them bringing roosters in special bags, I´m not sure where you would buy these bags but maybe there is a cock fighting store or section of the market. There was a bar selling beer, liquor, and soda, but no food, maybe food distracts the birds and compromises the fight. On my trip to the bar I walked in on the preparation ceremony. One man was holding the rooster and had trimmed the nail up on its leg to create a hole. Over this hole he placed a metal plate with a hole in it to use a support that was then taped to the birds leg. Into this metal hole and the nail hole a long sharp needle-like thorn was inserted with the point facing outward and secured to the birds leg with tape.

This process was repeated with the other leg resulting in the rooster having two sharp needles with the points facing backward from their legs. The whole time the rooster was shaking as if it was scared, but it wasn´t in any pain, not yet anyways. The first rooster was then brought into the ring and its handler would wave a random rooster in front of it to really rile it up and get it into a fighting mood while its adversary was being similarly prepared. With two roosters in the ring, each handler held their rooster and they touched the heads together, similar to the touching of gloves in a boxing match. After this the timer was set to some random amount and the birds were unleashed on each other. Finally free, the birds quickly faced each other and flared the feathers behind their necks to create almost a hood, in attempt to intimidate the opponent.

The fight began in rapid succession with a quick charge and some pecking to the head and neck. The action was really fast and it was hard to determine what was happening most of the time. The roosters would occasionally fly up and gouge at each other with the thorns on their legs. From time to time the roosters would become entangled when their nails would catch in the other rooster´s feathers. When this happened the referee stepped in to break up the birds with help from their handlers. After the initial time expired the handlers collected their rooster and wiped the blood from their heads and then either kissed the birds for luck or gave them mouth-to-mouth to help them breath, before returning them to the fighting. People in the stands would yell things as the fighting intensified and a few times the action was less than a few feet from our front row seats.

Despite being so close it was hard to follow a lot of the action as it was mostly a high speed flurry of feathers and pecking. The fighting continued until one of the birds got weaker and weaker from losing so much blood due to the cumulative small wounds. Eventually, one rooster would strike a death blow on its weaker counterpart and the bird would go limp and fall down. At this point victory was declared and the birds were separated and removed from the ring. The winner was praised and taken to be cleaned up and rested for another match later in the night. The loser, well, he was not so lucky, in reality, he was still alive, albeit just barely. He was removed from the ring and taken to an area just nearby, leaving a bloody trail along its exit route. Near the ring the losing rooster was held upside down over the concrete floor and allowed to bleed out as it slowly died of the course of a minute or two.

Such is the cycle of the cock fight. There were long delays in between matches as the birds had to be prepared. Opponents are selected by displaying the birds on a long table and discussing the number of victories that each bird has, and probably a few other criteria that I didn´t understand. There is also considerable betting that goes on for each match, and I have no clue what the odds are or how they are determined, it was well beyond my level of Spanish. The one thing I did find out is that you can bring your own rooster to fight. So what I recommend, if you find yourself at the market in Otavalo on a Saturday, is to buy a rooster from the live animal market in the morning, train it during the day, and then bring it to the cock fighting pit at night. It’s always better when you have a vested interest in something and in the best case you might even win some money, worst case your meals for the next day are covered.