MINDO also know as Mosquito Hell

DUUUUDE! BUGS!!! Everything was great except the massive massive amount of mosquitoes! I knew there would be a lot and I took bug spray and I wore it all weekend but I still got eaten alive! I hoping they heal quickly so I don’t look like I have chicken pox on my legs during Caroline’s wedding!

We took an early bus Sunday morning to maximize our time there! We didn’t have school on Monday or Tuesday this week so we stayed until Tuesday morning! We got to Mindo around 10:15 and first found our hostel. Then we took off to see the Mariposas/ butterflies. It was so cool. You could put fruit on your finger and they would land on you to eat it. Unfortunately for me, it just so happens, their fruit of choice was banana. YUCK! I did it anyways though! I got some really great pictures!

Afterwards we headed up a giannntt hill to go zip lining. All the roads in Mindo are dirt roads so by the time we got there we were covered in dust and bound to have black snot later (sorry, tmi….). The zip lining was only $15 bucks and very worth it! They had 13 lines I think. Some more steep than others. We had a big group and about 6 employees with us! They’d spread out to keep us moving! On one line they bounced us up and down the whole way. Most lines we had to sit back, head away from the cables, and use our strong hand on the cables (with heavy duty gloves) to keep us from spinning. Buuut, on a couple we had the option of going tandem with one of our guides! They had two different poses. 1. The mariposa where you were upside down with hands and legs stretched out. 2. The superman where you were on your stomach with your arms out and your legs wrapped around the guide. I did both and they were GREAT! It was so thrilling and the views were great!

Me doing Superman!!

Lauren

Katie

Laura

This took several hours so afterward we went straight to dinner. Laura and I had fish again just like last time we passed through Mindo. The trout or trucha was really great but had the tiniest bones in it! I’m sure a ate a good amount of those. Oops!

Next day I got pancakes for breakfast which is a real treat here. Usually it’s eggs and toast. I’m really looking forward to going home for bacon and French toast! Anyways we met some really great Americans who are living in Quito for very different amounts of time working in an Orphanage in Carcelen where Colegio Americano is. They become important a little late in this adventure. After breakfast we hit up the Orchid Garden which was disappointing because the orchids were extremely small (like I’m talking we walked around with a magnifying glass).

Then we headed to see a waterfall. This we going to be even further up the giant hill we took to the zip lining place to we opted for a “taxi” but really we ended up in a truck bed. Sorry mom, it’s very traditionally South American! We survived no worries. Good thing we took this transport because when you got to the waterfall entrance you had to hike 45 minutes down to the waterfall…. And back up again! Along the walk though we found a bunch of people stopped at a rope swing! It turned out to be a lot of fun!

Afterwards, we went tubing, which was more like rafting! It was 7 tubes tied together and we had two guides with us! It was a short ride but very fun! There are no pictures of us actually tubing because we opted not to take anything with us.

We got eaten by the mosquitoes during zip lining and waiting to go tubing! Our hostel was fine. I have to say that was my first experience with Mosquito nets and it was not very pleasant. My bed didn’t have a head board or anything so the net rested on my face all night which was highly annoying! By the second night I wise up and scrunched into a ball so my face could be in the middle of the bed where the net was hung up high! That was a little better but all together still quite annoying! If you come to Ecuador bring your own heavy duty Deet with you! I forgot mine from the health center and that was a very detrimental error!

We opted to take the 6:30 am bus back to Quito on Tuesday so we could rest and recuperate before school Wednesday! We had attempted to buy our return bus tickets a couple times but the station was always closed. Go figure. So we got there at 5:55 am before the station even opened so we’d be first in line. After a while I decided to go get some breakfast. When I returned to the station the other girls informed me when the ticket office opened a guy jumped in front of them and bought the rest of the seats on the bus for the people he’d been talking to in the station that morning. Since we were already up at the crack of dawn we opted to take the stranding room. It was kind of convenient because we got to stand next to our breakfast friend’s seats and chat with them. It was fine until we started feeling very nauseous. Let’s just say 1 hour 45 minutes of winding mountainous road does bad things to your stomach while your rocking around trying to hold on to the handrails above your head. Eventually we were all enjoying some butt to bus floor contact to avoid throwing up! One of our breakfast friends gave Lauren (my housemate) her seat eventually because Lauren was looking really rough! The end of that ride didn’t come soon enough but we learned never to do that again.