Mindo
We left Quito early in the morning not getting a chance to have breakfast anywhere, but came prepared with oranges and bananas and avacadoes for the trip. The ´trip´was full of amzing scenery and great views of the pristine jungle hills, or mountains, or cloudforests... whatever you call it they were wicked, but we were so awestruck we forgot to take pictures of that stuff. The road wound down and down and down... out of Quito which is really high up (4000+ meters) down to Mindo which is around 2000 or so. The bus driver didn´t mind passing every single car or truck or bike we came to with little or no regard for the fact that it was a blind corner with a really big hill to roll down on the right. It only took two and a half hours, but Mindo was nice to get to alive to say the least.
The town was very small compared to the metropolis of Quito, and had one main street, with a few small dirt streets off of it. At he bottom is a little river, and at the top is a nice little overgrown park. Everything smelt like it had just rained, and we strolled up the street looking for ´Casa de Cecilia´which we had asked directions for, but never really quite understood them. W
e walked past a nice looking wooden building that said ´Hostal M...something´ so we checked it out. There was no one else staying there and for $5 a night we thought it was a steal! We dropped our bags gratefully and went for a walk around town and down a road that led to a bunch of touristy things like a Butterfly museum and a Tube down the river. The River was akin to the Gull River in size, just way way WAY rockier and tubing down it looked more painful than fun. Especially since the tubes were just rubber tire tubes, with the pokey air thingy sticking out.
We walked for awhile along the road and had lunch under a cable platform thing that crossed the river, just as it started to rain. ¨Let´s have lunch and wait out the rain¨we said. So we ate lunch and started walking back and got caught in a little more rain. It was nice and a perfect thing to do a day after walking up a friggin volcano (our legs were very achy).
That night we came home to a cat that was cooking it past our feet and out the door to the hostal. Thankfully our door was closed and it wasn´t in our room, but when yo
ur tired, and it´s pitch black, and a loud scratchy thumpy thing is running by your feet in a foreign country, you tend to let out a little scream. The rest of the night wasn´t much fun either, with dogs barking, Kareoke going on nearby, birds scratching, roosters crowing, and some old lady walking in on us, and someone hacking up a lung all night. Our first real hostal wasn´t much of a good experience.
The next morning we decided to move to Casa de Cecilia (which we had found on our walk the previous day) and for one dollar more we got hammocks, a river side view, shelves, a quiet and peaceful atmosphere, and some fun Ecuadorian kids to hangout with. We dropped our stuff off and headed out for breakfast and a 6km walk to a waterfall. The guy in the info centre either neglected to mention that the 6km was all uphill, or we neglected to understand... either way it took most of the morning to get up the road and the ´Tarabita´ (motor powered cable car) that crossed the valley and made the walk potentially shorter, was looking mighty nice. We presevered a little farther and made it to a pickup truck and a family that nicely asked for $3 each to go see the waterfall. We forked out the dough and started our descent to the falls. As we walked we slowly realized that for every step down we´d have to walk it back up after. Inside I wished there was a waterfall to swim in at the top too.
When we finally reached the bottom after the 10,000 steps or so and a stereotypical rickety wooden plank and wire bridge across a raging river, we came to a cool little river paradise. Someone had built up a little swimming pool, and diverted some of the flow into it. There was a ´Toboggan´ water slide into the river, and you could jump off a 12m cliff into the foamy water below the falls. It was pretty neat and we were the only people there for most of the time. It was very fun jumping off the cliff, but I made sure the guy showing us around did it first. There were no lifejackets, or helmets to be seen, but they did have a rope going across the river that you could grab onto so you didn´t float downstream over the next falls. It seemed very sketchy and my risk management buzzers were all going off, but after getting my feet wet and playing around everything was fine.
It started to get cool after about an hour of playing, so we packed it in and decided to head back before we would get caught in the afternoon rain. We dried off and hoofed it back
just in time. We spent the rest of the afternoon lazing about in our new found tropical paradise, and even met some new friends. Carmilla and Shayla are two girls that live at the hostal, and we hungout and drew and juggled and they basically ruined our quiet time. But it was ok because we got to practice our spanish a bit and they drew us pictures.
The next morning we woke up really early and took off for the coast, we had a crazy fun three bus trip and even managed a stopover in Esmereldas, which made us a little nervous. It is not suppoesed to be a nice city.
The bus system here is nuts. Unless you get on at a bus station in a big city, you just stand at the side of the road and the bus will slow down and you hop on as it drives by. They blast music, everything from salsa, to columbian beats, to micheal jackson party mix ´89. The best was when the Ghostbuster theme song started playing today. I looked around the bus at everyone´s faces to see if they were as happy as me, ¨Who you gonna call¨? GHOSTBUSTERS!¨Our bus transfers ussually consisted of them yelling ¨Esmeraldas¨or wherever we were going on the next bus, and then us jumping off the bus, grabbing our luggage and running across the road to the other bus, throwing our stuff wherever we can and trying to find a seat or standing spot. It´s a lot of fun and chaotic but it works!
The town was very small compared to the metropolis of Quito, and had one main street, with a few small dirt streets off of it. At he bottom is a little river, and at the top is a nice little overgrown park. Everything smelt like it had just rained, and we strolled up the street looking for ´Casa de Cecilia´which we had asked directions for, but never really quite understood them. W
e walked past a nice looking wooden building that said ´Hostal M...something´ so we checked it out. There was no one else staying there and for $5 a night we thought it was a steal! We dropped our bags gratefully and went for a walk around town and down a road that led to a bunch of touristy things like a Butterfly museum and a Tube down the river. The River was akin to the Gull River in size, just way way WAY rockier and tubing down it looked more painful than fun. Especially since the tubes were just rubber tire tubes, with the pokey air thingy sticking out.We walked for awhile along the road and had lunch under a cable platform thing that crossed the river, just as it started to rain. ¨Let´s have lunch and wait out the rain¨we said. So we ate lunch and started walking back and got caught in a little more rain. It was nice and a perfect thing to do a day after walking up a friggin volcano (our legs were very achy).
That night we came home to a cat that was cooking it past our feet and out the door to the hostal. Thankfully our door was closed and it wasn´t in our room, but when yo
ur tired, and it´s pitch black, and a loud scratchy thumpy thing is running by your feet in a foreign country, you tend to let out a little scream. The rest of the night wasn´t much fun either, with dogs barking, Kareoke going on nearby, birds scratching, roosters crowing, and some old lady walking in on us, and someone hacking up a lung all night. Our first real hostal wasn´t much of a good experience.The next morning we decided to move to Casa de Cecilia (which we had found on our walk the previous day) and for one dollar more we got hammocks, a river side view, shelves, a quiet and peaceful atmosphere, and some fun Ecuadorian kids to hangout with. We dropped our stuff off and headed out for breakfast and a 6km walk to a waterfall. The guy in the info centre either neglected to mention that the 6km was all uphill, or we neglected to understand... either way it took most of the morning to get up the road and the ´Tarabita´ (motor powered cable car) that crossed the valley and made the walk potentially shorter, was looking mighty nice. We presevered a little farther and made it to a pickup truck and a family that nicely asked for $3 each to go see the waterfall. We forked out the dough and started our descent to the falls. As we walked we slowly realized that for every step down we´d have to walk it back up after. Inside I wished there was a waterfall to swim in at the top too.
When we finally reached the bottom after the 10,000 steps or so and a stereotypical rickety wooden plank and wire bridge across a raging river, we came to a cool little river paradise. Someone had built up a little swimming pool, and diverted some of the flow into it. There was a ´Toboggan´ water slide into the river, and you could jump off a 12m cliff into the foamy water below the falls. It was pretty neat and we were the only people there for most of the time. It was very fun jumping off the cliff, but I made sure the guy showing us around did it first. There were no lifejackets, or helmets to be seen, but they did have a rope going across the river that you could grab onto so you didn´t float downstream over the next falls. It seemed very sketchy and my risk management buzzers were all going off, but after getting my feet wet and playing around everything was fine.
It started to get cool after about an hour of playing, so we packed it in and decided to head back before we would get caught in the afternoon rain. We dried off and hoofed it back
just in time. We spent the rest of the afternoon lazing about in our new found tropical paradise, and even met some new friends. Carmilla and Shayla are two girls that live at the hostal, and we hungout and drew and juggled and they basically ruined our quiet time. But it was ok because we got to practice our spanish a bit and they drew us pictures.The next morning we woke up really early and took off for the coast, we had a crazy fun three bus trip and even managed a stopover in Esmereldas, which made us a little nervous. It is not suppoesed to be a nice city.
The bus system here is nuts. Unless you get on at a bus station in a big city, you just stand at the side of the road and the bus will slow down and you hop on as it drives by. They blast music, everything from salsa, to columbian beats, to micheal jackson party mix ´89. The best was when the Ghostbuster theme song started playing today. I looked around the bus at everyone´s faces to see if they were as happy as me, ¨Who you gonna call¨? GHOSTBUSTERS!¨Our bus transfers ussually consisted of them yelling ¨Esmeraldas¨or wherever we were going on the next bus, and then us jumping off the bus, grabbing our luggage and running across the road to the other bus, throwing our stuff wherever we can and trying to find a seat or standing spot. It´s a lot of fun and chaotic but it works!
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