On a spontaneous overnight trip, Ryan and I left Quito on Wednesday afternoon in search of fresh air and adventure. We took a 2 hour bus to the small town of Latacunga and were fortunate enough to breeze into the perfect hostel and snag the last available beds. Of course, at that hour they were both upper bunks in 10-person dorm rooms, but who’s complaining?

I’d forgotten what it was like to sleep in a dorm room with nine strangers. Someone had turned out all the lights in the common areas at 10:30 pm, so everyone in the hostel was essentially forced to go to sleep at the same time. In a room of ten people not talking and all trying to sleep, every sound  was magnified. I lay on the top bunk hoping I wouldn’t fall off in the middle of the night, listening to the sounds of creaking bunk beds,  pages turning in someone´s book, and the guy beneath me starting to snore.

We dragged ourselves up at 7 am to catch a bus to a major indigenous market held in the nearby town of Saquisili. Growing impatient waiting for the bus, Ryan put his Spanish skills to the test and bartered with cab drivers until we found one to drive us the 20 minutes to the market for $3.50 (we refused the cab driver who wouldn’t budge from $4).

At the market, we picked our way through the crowds of indigenous people who were selling giant mounds of carrots, bananas, potatoes, and every chicken part imaginable. Their traditional dress is quite distinctive – nearly everyone was sporting a colorful poncho and a fedora. Half of the women carried babies wrapped around their backs with homemade slings.

We walked by giant pigs’ heads reminiscent of Lord of the Flies and a few yards away, drank fresh raspberry juice for 50 cents a glass. Ryan fell in love with an enormous and insane sword whose blade was fashioned from a giant fish’s spear, like the nose of a marlin or swordfish. The four-foot sword was entirely handmade and its handle was made from the horns of a chiva, which the guy selling it tried to explain was like a dog…with horns. I looked it up, and a chiva is a goat.

The same guy was also selling his dead dog’s head, which at first I thought was a stuffed animal or a hacky sack because it was tiny – the size of a golf ball. But no, I had to ask…and as I gaped openmouthed in shock, he explained that his dog had died (he assured me he hadn’t killed it), and he had SHRUNK its head before stuffing it. While he was talking, he picked up the head and was palming it like it was a piece of fruit and not the stuffed head of his former pet.

I’ve heard about a tribe in the Oriente whose culture involves headshrinking, but I was never quite sure what that entailed. This guy took it to a new level of weird. 

We asked for adventure and adventure we got! Still not complaining….