After my adventures in the jungle I headed a couple of hours north of Quito to Mindo. This is a tiny town of 2000 people seated at 1250m of elevation. It is situated in the middle of a cloud forest so the vegetation is very lush. The area is particularly known for bird watching and nature pursuits.
While I was there I stayed at the Casa De Cecelia hostel. It is actually a cluster of about 4 houses. I noticed in Mindo that most of the houses are built piecemeal and so the internal layout and design is not always very consistent as rooms are added as the owner has resources. My room was perched at the very top of one of the buildings. I had windows on 4 sides and had to crawl through a half door to get into it.
My room is the upper gable.
The staircase and half door to my room
My room with windows on 4 sides for the world to see in!
On my first afternoon I wanted to witness some of the diversity of the wildlife in the area so I visited an orchid farm and a humming bird observation point. The orchid garden was lovely and had about 200 different kinds of orchids. Not all were in bloom yet though so the guided tour helped to point out the nice ones.
A carnivorous plant which traps insects and then digests them in liquid at the bottom of the bod!
Next door was the humming bird observation point which turned out to be the covered porch for a hotel. I was thankful for the covered space as it poured rain while I was there as it did all the days I was in Mindo. One of the draw backs of the rainforest is that it rains a lot! They did have about 14 different types of humming birds that you could see. They were beautiful ranging in colours for dull brown to bright green and blue. They moved from feeder to feeder so fast they were so hard to see and even harder to photograph!
The humming bird garden
Next to my hotel, was a restaurant called El Quetzal. The restaurant makes wonderful chocolate which features in much of their cooking. The chocolate is made on site from organic, fair trade beans grown in the drier parts of Ecuador. I took the tour in which they explained how they make chocolate from bean to bar. They start with beans that are already fermented and dried. Their process starts with roasting the beans, crushing them, adding flavours etc until they make bars. It was very much like the process I saw at the Chocolate museum in Hamburg last fall.
Chicken drizzled in chocolate sauce with sweet potato fries
Amazing brownie with home made ginger ale
Chocolate pods on the left going all the way to the bar.
On my one full day I did one of the primary activities for tourists in Mindo which is taking the cable car across the gorge of the Mindo river to follow the trails to 5 lovely waterfalls. As I’m trying to work on doing some training for the Camino, I started off with the 6 km walk up hill from the town to the cable car. I keep forgetting that everything is uphill here and so something that in theory sounds like an easy walk turns into a royal workout for your butt! The cable car is an open air affair that sprints you across the gorge. On the other side you walk down to the river to see the waterfalls following along the river.
Mindo on the walk up to the cable car
The Mindo River in its mad rush
The cable car across the gorge.
The wet path above the river
Sometimes the bridges weren’t in the best shape
Sometimes the path was the river
The last waterfall I went too
If you look carefully you can see the path continues on the other side of the river. The bridge or stepping planks had been washed out!
Not the most attractive picture but this is what 3.5 hours of serious hiking on steep terrain in 99% humidity looks like!
My stats after the day of hiking:
Steps: 23,667, Distance: 16.4 km, Floors: 133 (it was a really deep gorge!).
The other big activity for us tourists in Mindo is zip lining which I did this morning before I sprinted out of town to my next stop. The course was 10 zip lines that criss-cross high above the Mindo River gorge. Because I went so early this morning (they hadn’t even really opened yet!) I was the only person to go at that time. So it was just me and two guides. I have to admit that I was totally terrified. I did the first line on my own and felt like I was going to lose my breakfast! Even though you are strapped in securely and attached to two separate lines, I had no way to control how fast I was going. I was so petrified that I was ready to stop. Thankfully they are prepared for this and I did the remaining lines attached to a guide who slowed our speed considerably. I felt like a chicken but it meant I was able to do all 10 lines. It was a very exhilarating experience but I think it will be a long while before I do this again. I’m not sure why it scared me so much more than paragliding did.
The only helmet that fit me was a children’s bicycle helmet!
What my scared perspective looked at!
Yes I survived! Attached to a guide but it still counts!
On shaky legs I sprinted back into town to grab my bags and catch the bus to Quito so I could turn around and catch the bus south to Banos (another capital for extreme adventure sports!). Quito has many many bus stations. Some are regionally focussed – the one at the north end of town serving towns to the north and similar for the south. This would be fine if many of the bus companies didn’t also have their own terminals and Quito wasn’t 40km long. So to get from my bus from Mindo to the bus to Banos I took a cab through the length of the city. An interesting ride as I haven’t spent any time in the southern end of the city. Anyway, I made it safely to Banos where I will spend the next few days hopefully doing more hiking etc though in a less humid environment!