Every year
for the last two, we have escaped Carnaval in Salinas by exploring other parts
of Ecuador. Last year we visited Cuenca for one month and this year we are off
to Mindo, Otavalo, Cotacachi and Ibarra for two weeks.
On a Sunday
night we took a taxi to the Salinas airport to take the new flight to Quito.
This flight by TAME Airlines had just started about a month ago and was so much
better than a two hour drive to Guayaquil and then the hour long flight. The
airport was very new and modern.
Standing in
front of our new Airport
Our plane
ready to leave
Our plane
left and arrived on time. We were being picked up by a shuttle from our hotel
The Quito Airport Inn http://airporthotelquito.com/ for an additional $8. After a short ride we arrived at
our destination. The room was large and rustic, the grounds pretty.
Our cute room
We woke to a
good breakfast the next morning and went about planning our ride to Mindo.
Deciding to treat ourselves to a taxi
rather than bother with the buses,
our host arranged a pick-up by 11AM for a cost of $60 to our hotel in
Mindo, a ride of approximately 3 hours.
Once you
leave the Quito area, the drive becomes very scenic, very green, very
mountainous, but very good roads.
Our driver, Roman, drove fast but safely. We had
some good conversations in Spanish- yea, we are getting much better in our new
language. After a couple of hours we stopped for a lunch of fried fresh trout,
a local specialty. The rivers here are full of trout making our meal very
fresh.
The little
restaurant where we ate
Our huge
plate of trout, beans,rice,salad- mmmmh
The months
of December to April are the rainy season in the cloud forests of Mindo and
sure enough, rain followed us for the last hour of our trip. It seems the
mornings here are rain free and sometimes even sunny but by 2PM the heavens
open up and it rains until the next morning. The good part is that this is the
slow season here with high season during June to August so very few visitors at
this time.
Mindo is
located approximately 6 Km off the main highway.
The trip web sites tell you that you can get
off the bus here and walk downhill to town. DON’T believe it! Unless maybe you
are a young back backer, only take the bus that goes to the Mindo bus station,
not any of the others that pass by the intersection.
Our taxi
took us right to our hotel ‘Case de Piedra’ our home for the next 4 days.
http://www.mindocasadepiedra.com
First
impressions left a little to be desired. Uwe rolled his eyes at me basically
saying ‘Petra, what have you got us into’ LOL
After
confirming our reservation at the desk, Sara, one of the wonderful workers,
showed us to the room we had booked. It was in the main building which housed
the double and single rooms. I stared in horror as our room only included a
shared bathroom. Sara quickly suggested we take the private cabin which had
room for 4 plus a large private bathroom for only $5/person more. Yes, definitely!!!
Our
beautiful cabin in the jungle with nice porch & chairs
The main
building housing single & double rooms
The office
& restaurant
The huge
swimming pool
Please be
aware that after we settled in, and saw that we were only a 3 minute walk from
town and then had an excellent breakfast(included), we ended up loving this
hosteria! Which just goes to prove, don’t always believe your first
impressions! LOL
We took a
walk through town next morning to explore. Mindo is very small and mostly
frequented by the younger back packing crowd and of course, those of us young
at heart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindo,_Ecuador
There is no
shopping to speak of, but a few very good restaurants including one of the
pizza places.
The chef and
his enormous brick pizza oven
And a very
tasty pizza- almost as good as any I have had in Italy
That
afternoon we went to another hotel that housed a butterfly garden.
What a treat
this was! On entering the garden, we passed by many hummingbird feeders with literally hundreds of the hummers of all different types- WOW
In the
butterfly garden, the butterflies were everywhere. So many different types and
none shy about landing on the visitors.
The next
day, we went to go on the gondola ride across a canyon and a hike on the other
side down to 5 different waterfalls. The gondola ride was very scenic.
That said,
make sure you are in reasonable shape as the hike is all downhill over very
varied terrain including many stairs, an open stream(yes, your shoes will get
wet) and some suspension bridges. How soon I seem to forget ( remember my post
about hiking down-and UP- to Cascada Romeo & Juliette? http://uwepetrastravelyear.blogspot.com/2012/04/march-26-to-april-1-hiking-in-cerro.html) and realizing that what went down
also had to climb back up?? Yea, well here I went again- whew!
Starting at
the top
Little path
straight down, down
Did I
mention I hate suspension bridges-LOL
Finally the
falls- only the first- we went no further than number 2
Waiting for
the gondola to take us back across
The weather
every day so far had been pretty consistent, no rain in the morning and lots of
rain in the afternoon and all night. So of course on the morning where we
planned to go zip lining, the heavens opened up as we left in our taxi. Great!
A lovely
view of Mindo on our drive up the mountain
The zipline
platforms- rain had slowed to a drizzle
Almost all
decked out ready to ride
And away we
all went- of the total 10 or so people going at the same time, we beat their
age by at least triple!
I’m that
little spot coming in for my last ride- what a thrill.
The next day
we got ready to leave for our trip to Otavalo ( more in my next blog). We said
farewells to our wonderful hosts- Mariela
And her brother Henry and their employee Sara
The other
wonderful thing about staying at small hosterias are the fellow travelers you
get to meet. In ‘Casa de Piedra’, we met Kevin and his father David from
Vancouver, Canada who were exploring Ecuador for a month and Rob and Mimi and
their two children from North Dakota who were travelling around Ecuador as
well, all fellow adventurers.
Thank you so much for positing this. Don ADORES seeing places where the altitude is too high for him to visit.
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