Sunday, January 27, 2013

My Trip to Mindo--The Journey Begins

This past week I was able to go down to Mindo for four days and I had the most magnificent time! I have tons of photos to share of course and much to tell you about this lovely, little tourist town in the Cloud Forest.

We traveled in style:
Our bus was a school bus and, as such, made for somewhat smaller people than most of us but it was still very comfortable and it was lovely to have such a delightful driver, Rolando.  We were on our way from sunny Cotacachi at 8:30 Monday morning.



We stayed in the most adorable hostal!  Here's the courtyard that goes to our rooms.





Here, two of my friends are helping me demonstrate the size of the leaves of some of the plants around here.  You'll also notice a lot of wet stuff--here it's wet leaves, above it's wet pathways, in other places it might be wet birds.  Wherever it is, it's a good indicator of the weather in a cloud forest.  It's not altogether different than that of a rain forest.

Mindo's primary industry is tourism.  There seem to be nearly as many hostals and restaurants as homes.  It's a very poor town and the pictures tell the story far better than I can.




Activities abounded throughout the trip and I'll leave some of that for another day.  In the meantime, tomorrow we'll take a step back to December so you can see all about the fun we had for the End of the World As We Know It.

6 comments:

  1. Hi Cynthia,
    I really enjoy reading your blog, so thanks for writing it :)
    I'm planning to go to Mindo one of the next week end and I was wondering if you could please give me the name of the hostall in which you stayed, it looks so beautiful! Thanks!
    Oh and maybe we could meet in Cotacachi, I'm living here until July :)
    Ciao
    Alessia

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    1. Hi, Alessia--

      Of course! I meant to put the name and website of the hostal in the post--I'll go back and update it. It's CasKaffeSu, operated by Luis & Susan Albán. The website is www.caskaffesu.com. I haven't seen that yet but I suspect it will be lovely. You'll love staying there! It's not fancy but it's clean, clean, clean and they're so accommodating.

      I'd love to meet you while you're still here! If we can manage it, I'd love to see you before you go to give you all the details I gleaned from my visit if you're interested. Let's see, how could we manage that without me putting my phone number here? Well, I'm going to be at Trebol tonight at 4:30 until at least 7:00. I try to sit in the back for the music but you can ask Wendy or David where Cynthia is and they'll tell you. Either that or just put another reply to this and let me know and we'll work on something else.

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  2. Hi Cynthia,
    Thanks for your replay :)

    I'm sorry but I can't manage to be at the Trebol because I'm here to do an internship and I'm gonna work until 17 and then go back home and have a skype conversation with my parents :)

    What about Sunday? I'm free all the day.

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    1. Can you do Sunday at 11:00 at Eddie's? In case you're really new to town, that's the coffee shop almost right next to Bank of Pichincha at Parque de San Francisco.

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    2. I've changed my profile picture with a new one, thought it can help tomorrow in finding each other :)

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