Mindo

Day 1 – City Escape

Waking up a bit fragile and early, Shell enquired about what we wanted to do today and wasn’t overly enthusiastic when I said we should go to Mindo, a small village in a jungle area which had been highlighted in our guidebook.  It was that or stay in the not overly welcoming Quito for another day and find a museum to visit, so begrudgingly she agreed.

After packing and getting our breakfast we then checked out the hostel and quickly found a taxi to take us to the bus terminal, fortunately Mike from the bookshop had given us good advice about an easier bus station to get to Mindo from.

The taxi ride was only about 30 minutes and when we arrived at the bus terminal we purchased some tickets that were departing for Mindo in around an hour.  So whilst we waited we grabbed a coffee and read for a bit.

 

The bus departed promptly and it was about a 3-4 hour journey to Mindo that crossed the equator line and then rose high up into the mountains, which once again had our ears popping.  During the journey we had some spectacular views and we also took the chance to read and doze  the time away (a 4 hour bus journey is nothing to us these days!).

We then descended the mountains and soon found ourselves in a dusty one road town surrounded by jungle.  Getting off the bus we wandered around for a bit trying to get directions for our hostel, about 15 minutes later we found it.

 

Our hostel was pretty nice as it was surrounded by thick vegetation and had an orchid farm attached with Humming Birds flying around.  The room itself was also quite nice and spacious and had a lodge feel to it.

 

 

Once unpacked we headed down to the main street where we intended to see if we could do the river tubing activity they had here.  Unfortunately the weather had turned a bit overcast and was threatening to rain and together with the fact there had to be a minimum number to do the activity we decided against it. 

Instead we wandered around the little town and found the local chemist to get some more Mossie bite cream as we thought it might be a good idea in these parts.

 

 

With little else to do and being later in the afternoon we found a small restaurant and sat outside having some welcome to Mindo drinks.  As we sat there drinking we just took in the local scene and sounds, which was mainly backpackers and mangy dogs bickering with each other. 

 

Although we hadn’t done much here we planned to do a waterfall trip the next morning and we were please we had made the choice to get out of the city and enjoy the tranquillity of this town.

 

 

The sun had now gone down so we thought we would get a bite to eat and across the road we spotted a Mexican, which we thought would be nice for a change.  The food we got was OK, but Shell’s bowl of Chile Con Carne had nothing on my now famous dish!!

After dinner we headed back to the hostel fairly early in the evening and settled down to some TV downloads on Shell’s Ipad, before hitting the hay intent on adventure in the morning before we left Mindo.