Do chickens have ankles?

I was looking forward to leaving Quito on Friday. We bought our $2 dollar tickets and boarded the bus for the 2- 3 hour trip north to Otavalo. As we got further from Quito the clouds  lifted and the sun began to shine. The bus journey was pretty uneventful apart from the novelty of street vendors boarding the bus at every stop to sell, mandarins, crisps and icecreams for 50c. The mountain road was lined with eucalyptus trees and the smell made it in to the bus like a Magic Tree.

My first impression of Otavalo is that it's a friendly, vibrant city.

Otavalo Town Square

We woke early on Saturday to go to the animal market, a spectacle not to be missed according to the guidebooks. We left our hostel at 7am and knew we were headed in the right direction as occasionally someone would walk towards us with a goat on a lead or with a chicken being carried upside down by its ankles (chickens don't have ankles do they....) anyway, we crossed the main road and all of our senses were completely assaulted by the sound of pigs screaming, the sight of guinea pigs being held by their throats and the smell not only of the animals but of tripe and whole pigs being cooked (for breakfast!).

We saw a small number of tourists but this is not a tourist attraction, it's a local market for local people - we watch deals be done and pigs and cows change hands. It was a bit of a culture shock and I found it quite distressing; the sacks full of guinea pigs, rabbits and kittens for sale and particularly the sound of the pigs screaming - I was glad to leave.
We picked up a small bag of doughnuts from a street vendor and headed back to our hostel for breakfast before going to the Artisan market.