A Little Vacation from My Vacation

My trip to Mindo, part of Ecuador´s cloud forest region, lasted from Sunday to Tuesday. I expected Mindo to be a hot tourist spot, so imagine my surprise when my bus left the station with less than 10 people on board and only picked up a few more Ecuadorians on the way. The trip took roughly 2 hours 45 minutes and that was with a 30 minute stop for a road closure. Not too shabby.

Mindo is small. One main road and one main square with lots of mini roads trailing off the sides. Here´s what you´ll find in Mindo...convenience stores, travel adeventure agencies, restaurants, Internet cafes and hostals. The evidence shows that Mindo is obviously a tourist destination, so where was everyone? On my last night in Mindo, I finally found out. At some point in the not too distant past, part of the road to Mindo collapsed. I saw a photo-not a pretty sight, but thankfully no one was on the road when the accident occured. There is also a mountain near Mindo that recently threatened "landslide". The authorities decided to create a controlled landslide instead of risking future issues. Unfortunately, the authorities didn´t realize the destruction the landslide would cause. Basically huge boulders everywhere. If all that wasn´t enough to keep away tourists, Ecuadorian and international alike, there was more. At least one newspaper noted the road to Mindo would be closed on Carnival weekend (which it wasn´t). Then there was an accident with a school group. For a number of days, Mindo was under a state of emergency. Needless to say, people have recently been detered from visiting Mindo. Funny thing is that I had no clue. The economy is really hurting because Mindo relies on tourism. Hope the tide will change soon.

Okay, now for my adventures. Sunday, was a bit of social shock. After living and working with a large group of people for a month, sitting in a hostal alone was a bit depressing. As much as I wanted to relax, it was just too quiet. I took a nap, ate lunch, walked around town, did Soduko, read and just about pulled my hair out (no not really).

Monday I got up early for a long walk/hike. The national park is either a $10 cab ride or a 2 hour walk. Guess which I opted for? The walk up was actually nice. I saw a blue morpho butterfly, a few birds and catepillars. The mosquitos found me too, unfortunately. I´m still itching. To get into the park, I took a cable car across the cloud forest (see photo). There are numerous waterfalls to see, but I went for the gusto-1 hour hike to the tallest one through primary cloud forest (meaning the forest has never been cut down). The forest was so lush and beautiful, but I found myself feeling bitter because every few minutes I´d run into a spider web. Now, if I had been smart I would have waved a stick in front of me the whole way, but that´s above my instincts I suppose. About 20 minutes into the hike, I encountered a small waterfall that didn´t have an obvious dry way to go around or over it. So, I walked through it. Grrr...nothing better than wet sneakers (hint of sarcasm there). I trudged on. There were more creeks and waterfalls but the rest had easy access over or around.

The view of the waterfall was actually anticlimactic. Though the top is indeed high, the tress and other foliage make it impossible to see the top. I guess the beauty of primary forests is that they´ve never been cut, but then they also lack the views. There is a staircase leading part-way up the side of the waterfall, which provided some advantage for viewing. However, it was kind of nerve-wracking to climb because the water just pelted down next me. Did I mention that I never saw another person during my entire hike...guess the spiders were out to get me because they didn´t have anyone else to pick on that day. The walk back was much more enjoyable. I even saw a snake slither away from me.

Looking down from top of the stairs

Monday night, I returned to my new favorite restaurant for dinner. I say my favorite for three reasons: it serves soy milk (which you never see in Ecuador), has amazing sweet plantains and one of the owners was a Peace Corps volunteer in 1987. She helped me find the way to the national park and was just a great person to chat with too. The restaurant is called Caskaffesu (http://www.caskaffesu.com/). Supposedly serves amazing brownies, but trying not to eat wheat, I refrained. Anyway, that night a couple from Canada invited me to join them for dinner. We had wonderful conversations, most of which involved travelling. They were in Mindo to do some birding and are now on an 8-day trip around the Galapagos.

Tuesday morning I took another walk to the butterfly garden. The garden sits about 3 km from Mindo amidst a beautiful scene of banana trees, wooden cabins, flowers and water. It´s not huge, but has (if I venture to guess) about 20 varieties of butterflies. Following my morning adventure, I packed up, ate one last bowl of vegetarian chili at Caskaffesu and hit the road back to Quito.

My D.C. mentality hasn´t left just yet. I´m all about the walking. This morning, I walked 30 minutes to Parque Carolina to visit the botanical gardens. I imagined the gardens would be small and run-down, but I actually think it´s a place my mom would enjoy (being a gardener, that says a lot). It has orchids, cacti, herbs, traditional Ecuadorian crops and a variety of other flowers and trees. In the afternoon I continued my walk to Jatun Sacha´s office for a brief orientation. I planned to taxi back but when I handed over my volunteer fee to Jatun Sacha and realized I only had $5 left, I decided to walk back to my hostal instead. A brief stop to change into jeans and then more walking. This time to buy rubber boots and to find the bus station. I can´t tell you how nice it feels to sit. Oh by the way, I wore flip flops all day too. My shoes, which I asked the lavanaderia to dry for me (remember the waterfall encounter?), now feel very snug.


The air in Mindo was so fresh and clean, but by walking all over the city today, I surely inhaled enough pollution to make my lungs filthy again. I could smell the diesel exhaust just flowing through the air. Maybe I should blow my nose to see the evidence...or maybe you didn´t want to hear that.

Tomorrow morning I head off to La Hesperia reserve. I´ll be there for a month doing something productive. I actually don´t know the details because I supposedly get to decide when I arrive. Unfortunately, because the reserve is about an hour from the nearest town, I won´t have Internet or phone access except on the weekends. The blog updates will be less frequent for the time being, but know that I´m thinking of you all often.

Cheers!

Becky