First week in Quito and area

We spent our first week as tourists and starting tomorrow we are going to be volunteering.
Our second day in Quito we went up Pichincha mountain on the teleferico (gondola) to 4100 metres. We hiked for something like 4 hours and could feel the altitude making hiking harder than it should be. It was beautiful and sunny and we both got sunburnt a little bit.
Next day we checked out of our hostel that rents rooms by the hour. We were already wondering why they were cleaning the rooms all day... in our travelling guide that hostel was highly recommended!
We took a 2 hour bus ride up north (for 2$) to Otavalo, which has an enourmous Saturday market. Lots of people getting on the bus to sell things like ice cream, water and toothbrushes. We got to practice our spanish by watching a movie on the bus ride. We stayed in a nearby town, Peguchi, which has a famous waterfall. We hiked up to the waterfall and made friends with some strange dogs that followed us the whole time. Also, some locals wanted to take photos of us at the waterfall, with their camera!
The market was really big with lots of indigenous textiles and crafts, but also food and a livestock market. Maybe even more interesting were the people themselves - their faces, clothing and the huge amounts of goods they carried. Also, kids and occasionally animals are carried on the back all wrapped up. At our hostel their was live entertainment with local music and dancing.
Sunday we took a bus back to Quito and we explored the Old Town again. Mainly churches - the Basilica vota del Nacional was the most fun because we got to climb all these sketchy ladders to the tops of two towers. Another interesting church was La Compañia, which has walls of gold.
We´ve been getting by ok. We´ve ended up taking taxis a lot because they are cheap and easy (we never need to wait more than 1 minute since there are so many). Most people here can´t speak a word of English. This will help us learn spanish faster, but is making things challenging.
Starting tomorrow we will be volunteering at the Santa Martha Wildlife Rescue Center.