Our next trip was to a place called Otavalo which is a very interesting small market town where most of the people are Indians. Physically they are small and stocky with olive skin and black hair. The women have a long plait or a ponytail and often wind coloured braids round it. The men also tend to have long hair and a plait. The women wear long, straight black skirts with a slit up to the waist and usually a cream coloured skirt underneath. These are worn with beautiful white blouses flaring out from the elbows, with embroidered flowers and patterns, often with a shawl of a rich fabric over one shoulder and lots of necklaces made of gold coloured glass. Men and women often wear trilby hats. Many of the men have adopted Western dress but the more traditional ones wear baggy white trousers and a poncho. As mentioned, a large proportion of the women and the young girls have a baby on their back. One of the tragedies of rural Ecuador is that the population is soaring out of control, set to double in the next eight years. The Roman Catholic Church, which has taken over from the tribal religions, is largely to blame for this. It is hard to see what can prevent the country from going the way of Brazil: shanty-towns outside the cities, poverty, crime, drugs and misery. As yet, things haven't gone quite that far.

We saw a bit of begging and some of the old women came up to us cringingly but most people seemed well fed and well clothed. We also encountered a couple of very pathetic looking people in Quito. One woman looked half dead, lying out on a flight of steps with swollen legs and a blister on one that was bigger than a tennis ball.