Louis:
Originally planning to go to a town called Papallacta, we once again made the wrong choice of bus stations, and once again we resigned to going somewhere else. We chose a jungle town called Mindo, which is about three hours away. We had initially wanted to save a few days for Mindo because it seemed like a cool place to hang out and because two three hour bus rides is a little lengthy for a day trip. Seeing that we were leaving at 10:30am we realized that we would only have about three hours there (which was later cut short by a half hour stop in another bus terminal.) The long winding road, which descended 2000 meters into the foothills, was beautiful but was a little tough to focus on with a horror movie called Yeti, playing twice as loud as it needed to be. Just as the terrible movie ended we reached our stop, got off, and hoped in the back of a truck, which took us down the road a few miles to Mindo.
Mindo is a small town, which is sustained almost entirely on eco-tourism. The town offers guided tours, canopy zip-lines and tubing trips down the small river. The town is surrounded by some awesome cloud forest but for our two hours I was happy to just walk within town and look for all the hummingbirds Mindo is famous for. Bird wise, we did see some really cool stuff, including Squirrel Cuckoos, Groove-billed Anis, and a Water Tyrant. While I had my binoculars pointed into the trees Sarah was dog-watching. Every dog that walked by was apparently cuter than the last, and the awwwwes flowed freely. After walking around for an hour or so we stopped into a restaurant owned by an Italian man, which made some great pizza. Then back to the bus station we went, where we had a bit of a problem. There were a total of three more busses leaving Mindo for Quito that day, and there was no space left on the one we planned to take. I asked about the other two and there were two seats left, but inconveniently they were on two busses, which left an hour apart. We considered taking the two seats but it seemed really inconvenient. We were also considering skipping school and staying the night, when the bus driver offered to let us sit on a ledge near the front of the bus so we went with that option.
The drive back up to Quito was nicer in a couple of ways. They didn’t play the worst movie I had ever seen this time, there was a little airflow instead of sealed windows, and we sat next to a German guy named Jonas, who was cool. At the end we exchanged phone numbers. We bought a used cell phone but we still need to get a new sim-card so we can call the US. We also ran into a French friend from class on the terminal. We got home at 6:30 or so and it seemed like bedtime. That’s a problem here. The day is twelve hours long at all times -dark at the same time and light at the same time. For New Mexico in the summer that is a very short day and for winter it is a long day. Having left solidly in the NM summer the days seem short here and it’s a little odd to have it get dark at six. It is also odd to think that the seasons are reversed here (not that the seasons are at all like the seasons in NM) but we got temporary relief from that having crossed over to technical winter when we crossed to the Northern Hemisphere to get to Mindo. The Equator has always been a huge thing in my mind, and this isn’t the first time I have crossed it but driving by the monument really got my mind going. At a certain hour on a certain day of the year they say, that the top of the volcano Cotopaxi is the closest point on Earth to the sun, but I felt pretty close, driving in the wrong bus, across the waist of the world.
Originally planning to go to a town called Papallacta, we once again made the wrong choice of bus stations, and once again we resigned to going somewhere else. We chose a jungle town called Mindo, which is about three hours away. We had initially wanted to save a few days for Mindo because it seemed like a cool place to hang out and because two three hour bus rides is a little lengthy for a day trip. Seeing that we were leaving at 10:30am we realized that we would only have about three hours there (which was later cut short by a half hour stop in another bus terminal.) The long winding road, which descended 2000 meters into the foothills, was beautiful but was a little tough to focus on with a horror movie called Yeti, playing twice as loud as it needed to be. Just as the terrible movie ended we reached our stop, got off, and hoped in the back of a truck, which took us down the road a few miles to Mindo.
Mindo is a small town, which is sustained almost entirely on eco-tourism. The town offers guided tours, canopy zip-lines and tubing trips down the small river. The town is surrounded by some awesome cloud forest but for our two hours I was happy to just walk within town and look for all the hummingbirds Mindo is famous for. Bird wise, we did see some really cool stuff, including Squirrel Cuckoos, Groove-billed Anis, and a Water Tyrant. While I had my binoculars pointed into the trees Sarah was dog-watching. Every dog that walked by was apparently cuter than the last, and the awwwwes flowed freely. After walking around for an hour or so we stopped into a restaurant owned by an Italian man, which made some great pizza. Then back to the bus station we went, where we had a bit of a problem. There were a total of three more busses leaving Mindo for Quito that day, and there was no space left on the one we planned to take. I asked about the other two and there were two seats left, but inconveniently they were on two busses, which left an hour apart. We considered taking the two seats but it seemed really inconvenient. We were also considering skipping school and staying the night, when the bus driver offered to let us sit on a ledge near the front of the bus so we went with that option.
The drive back up to Quito was nicer in a couple of ways. They didn’t play the worst movie I had ever seen this time, there was a little airflow instead of sealed windows, and we sat next to a German guy named Jonas, who was cool. At the end we exchanged phone numbers. We bought a used cell phone but we still need to get a new sim-card so we can call the US. We also ran into a French friend from class on the terminal. We got home at 6:30 or so and it seemed like bedtime. That’s a problem here. The day is twelve hours long at all times -dark at the same time and light at the same time. For New Mexico in the summer that is a very short day and for winter it is a long day. Having left solidly in the NM summer the days seem short here and it’s a little odd to have it get dark at six. It is also odd to think that the seasons are reversed here (not that the seasons are at all like the seasons in NM) but we got temporary relief from that having crossed over to technical winter when we crossed to the Northern Hemisphere to get to Mindo. The Equator has always been a huge thing in my mind, and this isn’t the first time I have crossed it but driving by the monument really got my mind going. At a certain hour on a certain day of the year they say, that the top of the volcano Cotopaxi is the closest point on Earth to the sun, but I felt pretty close, driving in the wrong bus, across the waist of the world.
Go take picures of the Equator!
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