Mindo: The cloudforest

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So, we left Quito early in the morning because we couldn´t get current bus info but we knew there was a bus around 8 a.m. headed for Mindo, 2 hours northwest of Quito. The bus terminal was 45 minutes away from our hostel, so it's good that we left an hour early because the buses in Ecuador, unlike in Colombia, often leave on time if not early.

We arrived in Mindo around 10 a.m. and spent some time shopping around for hostels because there is fierce competition in Mindo, and we are here during the low season for tourism. We ended up at one called Hostal Sanchez, owned by a nice old man, for $6 each per night. It had hammocks and a nice garden out front and it was off the main street by a block. Mindo is a really small town with one main road and one tiny main square. It's known for it's outdoor activities, like hiking, ziplines, rafting, bird watching, paragliding, etc. It also has tons of butterflies, hummingbirds, and waterfalls. We decided to spend our first day doing the canopy tour on ziplines. We walked about 45 minutes to the zipline place and spent about an hour doing a 13-zipline canopy tour. It was really cool. Most of the time, we were on our own flying across the cables. But sometimes the guides gave us the option of going with them so we could do tricks like going upside down (the butterfly) or straight out (the Superman). Some were really long and fast and we had to keep our hands on the back of the cables for stability or to slow ourselves down. That always kind of scared me, but everything was really professional and safe. We had thick gloves on to protect our hands from burning on the cables. The only bad thing about our excursion was that we got eaten alive by these little black flies. Our legs were covered in bites that really itched. I counted mine later... I had 44 on one leg and 19 on the other. The bites kept me up that entire night as I scratched and scratched until they burned and ached. I know that´s not good for the bites, but I felt like I might go insane if I didn´t scratch them! Oh, it was awful. The next day I got up at 7 a.m. and went straight to the pharmacy for some anti-itch cream and allergy pills.

That day we went on a hike to some waterfalls. I was in a really bad mood, maybe because I lost so much sleep on my bug bites. Or, more likely, I was just starting to feel run down from all the travelling. So, the hike was not as lovely as it could have been, but we did get to see some pretty waterfalls and cool bugs and plants. We also got rained on for the last hour or so and got stuck under a pavillion waiting it out. We were the last ones to come back across the tarabita, which is like a cable car we had to take from one side of the mountain to the other to reach the hiking trails. We got a ride back to town with the guys who operate the cable car, which was nice because it was still raining.

I had been fighting a cold since Cali, but that night I started to feel really bad. My bug bites were still killing me and my left ankle was totally swollen from scratching the bites. I went to bed early and Ryan stayed up watching TV.

The next day we wandered around town until our 2 p.m. bus left for Quito. We arrived at the bus station at 1:55, we had already bought our tickets, but the bus had already left! We had to chase it down the road and fortunately some guys saw us and stopped the bus for us. Then it was back to Quito for another 2 days...

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Comments

[caroline]

Awww, hope you are feeling better, and getting some rest so you're not so run down! I only just finished reading all of your recent blog entries...miss you!! xx