Mindo

So two weekend ago (January 30 - February 1) I went to this town called Mindo with a bunch of kids from the BU program. Mindo is about 2 1/2 hours by bus west of Quito. We left on Friday afternoon and took the bus there. It was you normal bus ride winding around the side of mountains. We got into Mindo around 7 pm and were met at the bus stop by Cecilia the woman whose hostel we were staying in. She led us to the hostel which was great because it was dark and we may never have found it on our own. The hostel was called Casa de Cecilia and was pretty much like staying in a tree house as there were no windows and it was very open (see pictures). Friday night we just got dinner and hung around the hostel. We were all tired and we wanted to get up fairly early on Saturday so most of us went to bed pretty early.

The next day we woke up and got breakfast at the hostel at 8:30. Then we decided to go on a hike in the cloud forest. Our plan had been to do the hike and then go zip lining. We went into town and rode in the back of a pick up truck up to the top of the mountain were we would be hiking. To get to the place were the hiking paths were we had to take this cable car thing. It was not the sturdiest thing but it was awesome. I had a lot of fun riding it and it gave you a nice birds eye view of the forest. Once all 13 of us got to the other side we decided to do an hour long hike to the largest waterfall in the area, Cascada Victoria. The hike was absolutely beautiful. We were walking through this gorgeous jungle. There were so many different shades of rich green. We also got to see lots of cool bugs and some AWESOME spider webs. We all tried to take pictures of the webs but the never came out. Pictures really do not do the forest justice. It was a really fun hike. We got to cross a few mini water falls and trek through some mud.The waterfall was also incredible. They had built this stair case so you could climb up closer to the top of the waterfall. We all climbed up and I waded around in the waterfall. After playing in the water we hiked back. At this point it started raining some. It wasn't too bad in the forest because we had lots of natural umbrellas. By the time we finished it was a little after 1. We were all pretty hungry, but all the places to eat were back down the mountain and we would have to come back up for zip lining. Since we were all hungry and it was raining pretty hard we decided to wait on zip lining until Sunday. So we rode a pickup truck back down and went to lunch. We then went back to the hostel to get dry clothes. When we got back we heard that the major road we would have to take back from Mindo to Quito had been washed out by rain. There was only going to be one bus on Sunday that leaves at 6:30 am and had to take a 6 hour route home to avoid the road that had washed out (lets call this the scenic route). We all managed to get tickets, but it messed up our Sunday plans. We decided to just enjoy the rest of our stay and not worry that our weekend had been cut short. We chilled at the hostel, drank boxed wine, and ate pizza. It was a lovely evening.

The next morning we woke up ridiculously early and had breakfast at 5:30 before going to get on the bus. The ride home was uneventful (not counting one major pothole). We got back to Quito around 12:30 and I almost left my phone on the bus (key word luckily being almost). I went home and collapsed and watched the Dick Van Dyke Show on my computer.

It was an awesome weekend, but I think a bunch pf us want to go back so we can go zip lining and do the other things we wanted to do.