So we leave for Mindo on a bus which takes us to Media del Mundo, a tourist-oriented experience that is placed directly on the Equator that I can't tell you much about because El capitan just talked his way into the place for the ATM, avoiding the $2 charge, where he was able to get money out of my account but his was in lockdown because he tried to use it out of the USA. Then the adveture began.
We walked across the street from the attraction to thumb a ride to Mindo, because we didn't want to take the bus the rest of the way into the Cloud Forest, we wanted to hitch with a pick-up truck to ride in the back for the view. This took about half an hour until a fellow about our age with an empty pick-up truck came along and stopped for us. He actually asked us if we wanted to ride in the cab, but we both hopped right in the back.
The ride took about an hour, so of course, this happened.
The scenery was amazing as we plowed through clouds and around mountain roads much too fast and often on the wrong side of the road. We pulled up on a dirt road off the main road where the driver told us that we were pretty near Mindo and offered for us to see his house if we didn't mind the 1 km walk back to this main road. We went for it. The house he and his pregnant wife live in is in the middle of the Ecuadorian coutryside. He built the house himself and they both work as biologists studying the forest. The house itself was an amazing loft-style open air home with the downhill side, we are still 3-4,000 meters up in the Andes, of the house is almost completely glass. We didn't stay long because the drive to his house was observed to be more than the suggested km. And he (can't recall his name) wasn't able to give us a ride because he had to study. The hike back wasn't too bad even though I had my nifty pack double full and all on my back while hiking thru the thin air.
We reached the main road which fortunately had a bus stop right at our road's terminus into it. Funny thing about busses in Ecuador is that they are not always well-labeled and often just have a person hanging out the door to holler the destinations as it passes you and you better hail it quick before its gone; most especially because we are in the middle of a straightaway downhill stretch that declines at least a thousand feet before turning. We watched a few busses fly by, and tried to simultaneously hitch a ride the rest of the way. Neither of these things working we decided to hail the next bus and just ask when the 'Mindo route might be by...it, of course, was the Mindo bus. So we hopped on. Unlike the first bus, my large pack didn't fit in front of my seat, so I had to put it in a seat by itself, which worked because there were empties, but it was the first imperfection of my bag. El Capitan left a large amount of his items in Quito with Pablo at his hostal, who is full of impeccable trust. I, on the other hand, wanted to bring the full bag so that I could try it out on overland travel.
I liked Mindo better than Quito from the start, "this is more my speed," I told El Capitan as we were walking thru the town the first evening. For a start, there is about 1/10,000th the number of people here. We went straight to Casa de Cecilia which was full of a group of tourists who seemed to be a school group of high school kids. So began El Capitan's ranting against the growth of tourism in Mindo, which just last year had been off the map. Cecilia had a young lady lead us over to her sister's Hostal and during the walk she stated that she was going to go to the University in Quito, to study the industry of Tourism. El Capitan, your dream of a hideaway town in Mindo is fast being fed to the generation growing up now.
After securing the room, we headed straight to Fuera de Babylon, where I ate freshly caught Mountain Trout straight off the bone, with, you guessed it, plantains! The ahi, each restaurant has its own version of this salsa type hot sauce that is on the table in a bowl, was delicious, better than most I have tried -- not too many onions. But then the same group came in from the hostal next door and filled the restaurant, we finished our cerveza grande that the waiter would go and purchase from the store next door each time we ordered one, and hit the road.
Then came the puntas. Sugar Cane distilled into fire water. We went first to a convenience store and bought a small bottle of water. El Capitan started dumping the bottle out on the ground, and I hollered "just like an American," which got the bad part of his attention. I drank most the rest of the water so we had an empty bottle, because if you don't bring your own bottle it comes in a bag like you bring a goldfish home in. So we paid 25 centavos for the small bottle full and bought a pack of cards for ten times that amount, because "trust me," said El Capitan, "there's just somthing about puntas that makes you want to play cards (we never did make it to the card game).¨ He led me around the streets to a gravel pile where we sat under the streetlight to sip the puntas. HA! After my first gulp I told him "no more of that juice until I have something to wash it down with." And so I bought my first Coca Cola of the year. Didn't really help, just made the sweetness sweeter and the burn worked in some evil synergy with the Coke chemicals so that the next morning I knew what I had done. But before the morning came, we wandered back into the main street and sat to watch about 15 people, mostly high-school aged i'd guess, play futbol in the road. I sat there talking about how in just a minute I was going to join in, but after a ball was kicked towards us and I missed it from the curb, El Capitan's laughter explained my dexterity better than I felt it. "I really was hoping that you were going to play futbol last night with your adept movements on the sidelines, I could not wait to see you get shown up by girls half your age!" But that was not to be because we had finished at least 10 ounces of the puntas and sleep was soon to come.
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