Mindo el Lindo

A Warning: First, I apologize for the massive delay in this post. I do however, have valid excuses. I have worked 19 consecutive 10+ hour days without a day off, and Ecuador is in a major drought, and our power is hydroelectric, therefore our power is cut daily for anywhere between 3 and 8 hours. Second, I must warn you that this post is basically a novel. So maybe you should bring over a snack, a drink, a pillow in case you get tired, and, especially you mom, your reading glasses, because this is going to be a long one.

Halloween Weekend was a four-day weekend in Ecuador (something to be treasured) as here “Día de los Difuntos” (Day of the Dead) is celebrated. As Archidona itself barely has enough to keep you occupied for an evening, and always obsessed with travel, I decided to join my boss (Tyler), my Quito roommate, Scott, and my boss’s South African friend Wayne and his girlfriend, Paula on a trip to Mindo. Mindo is a touristy cloud forest community 2 hours northwest of Quito, well know for its rivers and waterfalls. I had been to Wayne and Paula’s house for a soccer game when we watched Ecuador lose to Uraguay in the last minuets of the game due to a stupid referee, thus knocking them from World Cup Running, and I knew that I enjoyed their company.

To get to Mindo, I first had to take a bus to Quito on Friday evening. I will admit that I was a little nervous and not excited for the solo 5 hour bus ride from Tena to Quito during the night, but I eventually decided it was worth it. Plus, the cab ride from Archidona to Tena to catch a bus introduced me to my new, personal cab driver. A cab driver is gold here, as there is no general number you can call to get a cab and cabs are sometimes hard to find in Archidona. Now however, I have Panfico’s name and number, and have been instructed to call him whenever I need a ride anywhere. The bus ride was in fact the best ride I have had yet, but mayhem hit when I arrived in Quito around 10:00 pm. Since it was a holiday weekend, everyone was traveling, and the bus station was the busiest I had seen it yet. I weaved my way through the hoards of people and found myself a cab driver, first making sure he knew where my street was (as I can’t keep the Quito streets straight) and then securing the price of $8.

This is when things start going downhill. 30 minutes later, we were lost, him telling me he was going to charge me extra. After 45 minutes in the cab (normally a 30 min. ride) we arrived at Casa Runa (where the employees in Quito live) and the cabbie turns to me and says “$15”. I of course, was not pleased, and explained to him that normally it is a 30 min. ride, but with major traffic and him getting lost it turned into a 45 min. ride, and that it was not my fault there was bad traffic, and that he told me he knew where the street was. I was able to talk him down to $10, which I still believe to be a total rip-off, and then gave him a nasty look before going inside.

Saturday morning we got off to a slow start, as our ride bailed on us, but luckily we still had our junker truck, and Tyler, Scott, Noe (the dog) and I piled into the truck, Noe tied in the back with the compost. We had been planning on taking our big compost bucket (full of fruit and veggie scraps they had been collecting for months) to an organic farm. Not even five minutes into the trip, the compost bucket spilled, covering the dog and the truckbed in compost juices. Just opening the truck door was a mistake, as compost stench filled my nostrils. Tyler got out to fix the the bucket and clean up what he could, and when he got back in the truck Scott calmy said “Man, I can smell your hand”, and we could. As I mentioned, Quito was packed with travelers, and just getting out of Quito proved to be an adventure. At one point, Tyler stopped the truck on the side of the road (kind of) and asked Scott to get out and by him a phone card for his cell phone. Scott speaks minimal Spanish, and he came out to tell us that they didn’t have the card Tyler wanted but that they had a bunch of 3 dollar cards, and Tyler said he didn’t want them, Scott walked back to the store, then came out and said that he thought they were already printing the cards, to which Tyler responded, “Did you pay yet?”. When Scott said he didn’t, Tyler told him to jump in the car and we drove off, soon however, Scott yelled out “Someone is chasing us down!” and then he was locking all the doors and reaching for his mace (despite being at least 6 ft. and very muscular, he carries his mace everywhere he goes, and I have been told he also walks around Quito with a small knife and flashes it whenver someone threatening looking walks by). So, the doors are locked, and he is telling us how he is going to mace this guy, and then, the guy runs past. Apparently, he was not interested in us at all. This of course led to excellent mental images of someone gripping onto the truck window (I should also say that 3 of the 4 truck windows were broken after supposedly being fixed, and since we were driving in the rain the boys had to use all their power to push the windows back up) as Scott sprayed mace in his eyes, it also led to many mace jokes throughout the weekend. It was a beautiful 2 hour drive to Mindo, with excellent music, reminding me how much I love roadtrips (no matter the length). My top roadtrip still remains New Zealand however, I don’t know if it can ever be topped.

When we got to Mindo we drove straight to a river, where we threw the dog in the water, attempting to get the horrible compost stench out, and we dumped the compost in the weeds (we gave up on going ot the organic farm). We were all gagging as the boys dumped the compost, the smell filling our noses. After getting that out of the way, we drove to our hostel/hotel. The place, El Quetzal, is owned by an American family that Tyler met last time he was in Mindo, and serves excellent food. The family was not there, but an American, Joe who now runs the place and two friendly Ecuadorian girls were. The hotel is still under construction, so there were only two rooms, and we were the only guests. The best part about the place, other than the fantastic service, was that they grow their own cacao, which means they make their own chocolate, which means I was in heaven. You could buy chocolate bars, chocolate milkshakes, hot chocolate, and what the boys on the trip have labeled the best brownies ever. After checking in to our rooms with beautiful views of the Mindo and the mountains, we headed to the river again. We hiked up through rapids to get to some good swimming places, and then just hung out there for a while.

Sunday morning I woke up to the two Ecuadorian girls yelling, “He ate the chickens, they are going to kill him”. Apparently, during the night Noe attacked and killed the neighbor’s chickens, and the neighbors were about to inject him with some kind of venom to kill him, but Tyler talked them out of it. Sunday afternoon we met up with Wayne and Paula who had just arrived from Quito and hiked to a family’s property we had been told about that encompasses100 acres of protected primary forest that are excellent for hiking. It was a really beautiful forest, and a nice hike, with breathtaking views of Mindo as the sun began it’s downward slide. Throughout the hike we kept our eyes peeled for the speckled bear that supposedly lives there, and while Scott is convinced he saw one (it was really a falling leaf), we didn’t see any large wildlife.

The top of our hike:

That evening was our most anticipated activity: night tubing. Basically, a bunch of innertubes are tied together, and you head down a river filled with rapids while two Ecuadorian guides dressed in jeans and rubber boats prevent you from hitting anything too dangerous, or manage to free you when you and your group are wedged between one too many rocks. We decided to make it all the more extreme by going at night, and Joe (the guy running the hotel) set us up with his business. By 8:15 we were sitting in a truckbed that is obviously used to transport livestock, never feeling so much like livestock ourselves, peering through the slats in the wood sides as we raced through the dirt roads, with our tubes balanced above us.

We tubed down that section (always keep your butt up)

We finally arrived and stripped down to our swimsuits, not eager to get into the freezing water in the middle of the night. After about 1 minute of instruction on what to do (keep your butt up and don’t put your feet in the water) we were loading into the tubes. Our guides were soon splashing water at us, yelling, and then, we were on our way down the river. All of Ecuador is experiencing a major drought right now, and everyone I talk to attributes it to global warming (they seem to have a better grasp on this then many Americans, perhaps because they suffer from it more directly), and so, even though the river should be at its highest point right now, it was pretty low. This meant that our guides were often yelling at us to bounce as they tried to get us unwedged from rocks and that it was not quite as extreme as I had hoped. When I got to feeling this way however, I thought, “I am in a river, in a cloud forest, in Ecuador, in the middle of the night, going down rapids on a tube”. One of my favorite parts was watching the guides, as they would often stand on boulders to push us off, and then have to jump onto the tubs, looking something like flying squirrels as the full moon lit up their profiles. None of us have any idea how long we were racing down the river, but eventually we reached the end, and then climbed on top of a large bus and set on benches drilled into the ceiling to get back to town.

Monday we set out to do some waterfall hiking, and were met by massive amounts of national tourists. This meant the waterfalls weren’t as secluded as we had hoped, but that didn’t stop us from jumping off a 40 ft. cliff into a waterfall. I had been told to pick up my feet before hitting the water so I didn’t hit the bottom: BAD IDEA…I hit the water full force with my butt, and I definitely was feeling the pain for the following days. After our waterfall hike and another great meal at El Quetzal, we packed out and headed back to Quito, not ready to jump back into the work week (I’d much rather jump off a 40 ft cliff).

In case you didn't think I did it: