Indio market

One of my days in Baños, instead of school, I had the opportunity to visit an Indio market. Every Thursday, the little town of Saquisilí, about half way between Quito and Baños, becomes very busy. Unlike the well known market in Otavalo, which nowadays is focused a lot on tourists, the market in Saquisilí is still from Indios for Indios, and people from the whole region come to sell or buy.

This way it was also possible to see the different traditional cloth of the Indio peoplevin Ecuador. Basically every community has a different way to dress (including a different hat), and quite many people actually dress in the traditional way every day as a standard.

Basically the whole town of Saquisilí is a market on Thurdays, although there are some main areas. At first I went to the animal market, as it closes the earliest. It's the market for all big animals. You could buy cows, sheep, pigs, lamas and donkeys, of any age or size. Next to it was a small food area, and you could see people eating there, with their new sheep on the leash next to them. The animals then were just loaded on the back of pick-ups and taken to their new home.

On another place in town, all the smaller animals were for sale: chicken (and chicks), doves, rabbits, and of course guinea pigs. Those kind of animals were usually sold in large quantities (especially the guinea pigs), usually for some kind of big event, like weddings.

The area, where meat was sold, was actually quite small, I guess most people would rather buy their meat still alive. Fish, however, were not sold alive (except for a few crabs and similar). The fish were mainly freshwater fish, out of the many rivers in this area. (Both for meat and fish, however, cooling seemed to be non-existent.)

In other areas, any kind of fruits and vegetables were sold (especially lots of mandarins, potatoes and yuca), as well as add different sorts of grains (especially rice and all different types of corn).

But not only good could be found on the market, basically everything was sold there: cloths, flowers, baskets, all different kind of metal parts, beds (including matraces), sofas, doors, ...

Leaving Saquisilí, we could see all the fully loaded pick-ups heading home, the back full with animals and food, and in the front a family of up to 6 or 8 people...