Adventure to Mindo

This weekend, five friends and I ventured to a small town two hours northwest of Quito called Mindo. Mindo is a tiny yet beautiful town heavily dependent on tourism. And sure enough, tourism is what the town does well. We were extremely impressed with every aspect of Mindo from our fantastic hostel to zip lining to tubing to taxi drivers (who drove us in small trucks) to small carts that carried us over the forest to hike down to waterfalls to a small chocolate making facility. I wish I could tell you what my favorite part of the weekend but I really can’t because it was all incredible!

I think pictures will describe my weekend the best so here are some of my favorites…

 Here is the hostel where we stayed, La Casa de Cecilia. *Note: I had my first experience sleeping under a mosquito net which we decided somewhat made us feel like princesses...and they seemed effective, I left with only one bug bite for the weekend which I decided was pretty good given the number of bugs that I saw!

Ziplining was quite an adventure and as it was raining toward the end of the experience, we went even faster than normal! It was amazing to fly over the cloud forest and after 12 cables we decided that it would absolutely be worth doing it again someday!

Tubing was made possible by two incredibly talented guides who worked the entire trip (about 15 minutes down the river) to make sure we were going in the right direction, avoiding trees and rocks, and overall staying in the tubes anytime we flew through the air. The river level was extremely high and was very fast (and COLD) which made for continued bursts of adrenaline and screams but it was definitely worth the experience.

We hiked to two waterfalls (I don't think I've ever hiked through so much mud before!) and given the amount of water spraying from the larger one I did not take out my camera so here is the smaller one. The hikes were beautiful and it was incredible to see new plants and to hear birds the entire way!

Our last hurrah in Mindo was to tour "Mindo Lindo", a preservation project which is essentially one man's backyard! He gave us a tour of the forest area which was considerably different than other places we had visited in Mindo. Different plants, beautiful flowers, "Ecuadorian bamboo", and at the end of the tour we sat on his porch sipping tea (lemongrass from his garden) and watched about 30 beautiful hummingbirds in the bushes and feeders he had set up. It was truly amazing to see how they interacted with each other.

One thing that we realized we should have done earlier was to buy a return bus ticket for Sunday. We learned this after the hostel owner inquired what time we were leaving and to our dismay, all of the seats on the buses for the day had been filled! However, being the wonderful hostess that she was, she organized for an employee of the hostel to borrow a van (buceta) so eleven of us (we met others staying at the hostel who also made our same mistake) split the price for being driven back to Quito. Overall, I don’t think it could have been a better first weekend adventure!

As for what’s been happening back in Quito…I’ve been enjoying classes and the University (yesterday there was a huge Chinese New Year celebration in which students could listen to live bands, watch live performances, and eat cake…and drink wine?!) I have also been getting used to the longer bus rides home as I’ve noticed a pattern of rain beginning as soon as my last class finishes (5:25pm) in which everyone decides to take the buses. This makes for a lot of patience…and pushing! I’ve realized that the only way to get on some buses is to follow the crowd to push your way on. As much as I don’t enjoy pushing people I do enjoy getting home at a decent hour so I’ve assimilated to the ways of public bus etiquette. But as always, I thoroughly enjoy people watching on the bus: a woman curling her eyelashes with a spoon, a boy pushing trash out of the crack of the bus doors, a little three(?) year old girl pushing her younger brother around but the two laughing nevertheless, the vendors that come onto the bus at any opportunity to sell their cherries or chips or candy, and how people react in the midst of a small accident which inhibited our bus’ passing (in which a grown passenger called the driver “four eyes”). Yes, you can see everything on the buses here! 

Hope you are well and I hope to write before so much time goes by again!