Textile Market

The reason most tourists come to town (and the reason you probably can’t find a hotel room on Friday night) is the Saturday textile market. Vendors from town and surrounding villages set up shop well before dawn. Coffee steam mingles with clouds of breath as vendors chat, gobble a quick breakfast, and set up scaffolding to display their wares. By 8 a.m., the animal market is underway, and soon the Plaza de Ponchos is packed with a brightly colored, murmuring throng of vendors and tourists haggling over every imaginable type of textile and craft. The market has become so successful that there are now smaller ones every day of the week. The Saturday market is the biggie, though, and it’s worth experiencing even if you don’t intend to buy anything. Just getting up early and watching the place slowly come to life as the sun rises over Volcán Imbabura is a wonderful experience.

  If it can be made out of wool, cotton, or synthetic yarn, you’ll find it here. Wall hangings are popular, woven with abstract patterns or designs of intermeshed birds and lizards (inspired by a book of M. C. Escher’s drawings brought by a Peace Corps volunteer years ago). Thick wool and alpaca sweaters come in interesting color combinations, and carpets and blankets of the same materials are often covered in llama designs. Piles of hats made of felt or wool teeter next to mounds of surprisingly inexpensive wool mittens, socks, and handbags and cloud-soft alpaca teddy bears. The best (and most expensive) ponchos, worn by the Otavalans themselves, are made of thick wool dyed blue with indigo imported from abroad, with a collar and gray or plaid fabric on the inside. Ponchos are also made of synthetic materials like orlon, which is less expensive but more garish.

  Long cloth strips called fajas, used by indígenas in the Sierra to tie back long hair, hang next to their wider cousins called cintas. Also known as calluas, many of these belts are woven in La Compañía on the other side of Lago San Pablo. A single belt woven on the traditional backstrap loom (stretched between a post and the waist of the seated weaver) can take as long as four days to complete. Jewelry similar to that worn by indigenous women is spread out on tables: necklaces of black or red beads, interspersed with earrings of turquoise and lapis lazuli. Other treasures include raw fleece, yarn, and dyes, textiles from Peru and Bolivia, painted balsa-wood birds, and piles of assorted junk hiding the occasional valuable antique.

  For the Saturday market, it’s best to spend Friday night in town; arrive early or make reservations ahead of time to secure a hotel room. Get up early Saturday morning for the animal market and the best selection and prices in the Plaza de Ponchos, because vendors often give their first customer the best price of the day for good luck—or say they are, anyway. Bargaining is expected, even in many stores in town, and proficient hagglers can talk prices down significantly. Prices peak when the tour buses from Quito are in town, usually 9 a.m.–noon, so arrive early or linger late for the best deals.