(Editting: Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Mindo. was. fantastic. and I could not have done it without some beautiful friends Sethasauras, Karlos, Katelyn y Andy. I have been underestimating how much things will cost so I only brought about 25 dollars for the whole weekend. Silly really because zip lining was 13$. It was exceedingly cheap compared to the US, but not so cheap that 25$ would last me the weekend haha.
We decided late Thursday night to take an early Friday bus so I was up until 1:30 packing with a bus that was scheduled to leave at 7:30. Because tickets sell out and buying them in advance isn't really worth anything (they tend to forget that they even sold them so it's best to just buy them there), we were told to get there between 45 and 30 minutes ahead. We boarded the bus and rode towards the northwest for about 2 hours until we got close to Mindo. We "arrived" at a dirt road and were told this was where we should get off. After getting off, we see a white van, no markings of course, that offers to take us down the hill to Mindo. We were 5 people strong and that's just how they do things in Ecuador - very informally - so we took the bus down further in altitude to the calle principal (main road).
After setting down our stuff in our hostel and meeting the wonderful Marcelo, an avid bird watcher, and his wife Norma we went to hang out on the hammocks (pictures on facebook) and saw this beautiful view of Mindo that wonderfully captured the simple, centered, hard-working life that I came to love in this little town.
From there we went and had lunch at Café Mindo where we all got food and a beer. Food takes a longer to get in Ecuador than in the states. It's just a much slower moving place so we were waiting for our food for quite a while. We were also told not to eat lechuga (lettuce) or tomate (tomato) nor anything else that wasn't be cooked or pealed. None of us were having trouble with different bacteria on the food in Quito so we totally went for all the food that we got and it was delicious - lechuga y tomate y todo. We left Café Mindo full, happy and ready to rest up before our next big adventure.
After spending an hour or two recooperating in the hammocks and re-realizing the joy that is to be had in simply sitting and relaxing, we decided to head to the Mindo Canopy Adventure zip-lining area. We hiked up to where the outpost was in the mountains (an easy walk compared to the hike we were going to do the next day). We suited up and had to wear these crazy leather gloves with extra padding across the fingers so that we could slow ourselves down by pressing down on the line that was holding us. The first zip we took was literally a breath of fresh air. I didn't really know what to expect and it was so beautiful to fly above the trees like that with the wind rushing by me and nothing beneath me but trees and air. It was like flying the way I had always wanted to between mountains. Totally free. Las guías were wonderful too. The two of them (Israel and Alex) were always laughing at how shocked we were and how much fun we were having. For each zip-line, one of the guías has to go first to catch us on the other side. The one time Alex went first on a really long one (probably 450-500 m), he didn't just sit back and put his head to one side and hold on with two hands the way we were told to. He jumped off the platform and immediately flipped himself upside down and did so many crazy positions and flips. I loved how comfortable he was - like a monkey. So comfortable in the air like that :)
We got some dinner that night with two other people from our USFQ trip, Jenna and Alyssa before milling about the city. We stopped by this little hut that will forever be known as "Coca Cabana". It had swings for seats and I had the most amazing piña colada there. The guy making it literally cut open a coco (coconut) and a piña (pineapple) right then and there and blended all the juices together - no mixes, no concentrates.
Aside: Again, Mindo - simple, beautiful, no need for processed, cheapened, meat-filler like fakeness in the food. It just was what it was. Same with everything. We didn't sign a waiver for the zip-lining, we didn't get any special instructions for our hike the next day. All of what we did was exactly the basic of what it needed to be. It was not a complicated life.
The next day we went hiking to see the cascadas (waterfalls) and I don't think I will forget the feeling of EVERYTHING around me being alive for the rest of my life. We decided to pile into the back of a white pickup truck with a taxi sign hand-drawn in the window up to the cascadas because we didn't know how far it was. Good thing we did because that itself would have taken probably 2 hours to hike! From there we took a little cart that was on a cable from that mountain to the next one where the cascadas were. $5 for the whole thing. Everything was so green :) Plants were growing on plants growing in some of the most moist (Julia D :P) soil. We hiked to about 5 or 6 cascadas in total and along the way saw some of the most beautiful plants. As many of you know, I am a sucker for leaves so I've included a picture of a leaf that simply floored me when I saw it.
This next picture is of the rest of the group at our final cascadas before we took the same trail back to the cable car. I love the growth off of the trees and the beauty of the fallen log that has been there forever. We all climbed it half way up for a picture spot.
Conclusion: Mindo is a must for anyone who is really looking to get away. I did some calculations and ended up paying about 70$ for an incredible weekend of incredible nature (it rained EVERY afternoon), wonderful food, and some great night fun and relaxation.
Para la gente que fue: "¡Papas rellenas de pollo! ¡Papas traiga de Cuba! ¡Papas rellenas de pollo!"
Con cariño,
María Elena
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