Mindo is a small town, sitting in a peaceful green valley within the heart of the cloud forests, and by all accounts, is considered an excellent spot for weekenders wanting to escape the big city and retreat into the blissful calm of nature. So on one weekend myself, Sarah, Alvin, Craig and Maha gathered our belongings and our wits and did just that, we all headed off to the jungly paradise. The journey is 2 and a half hours by bus, through the winding Andean mountains, west of Quito. When you arrive you pretty much fall immediately in love with the place (well I did).
Mindo is essentially one street, with a few side dirt tracks which house the odd hostal. The main road has primariliy restaurants (often selling deliceous pizzas) and the occassional coffee shop, selling freshly picked and ground coffee and chocolate brownies plucked almost straight off the Cocoa Tree - well the chocolate is anyway. The place is very into it's nature and preservation of all things that grow and because of this Mindo attracts a steady stream of backpackers disguised as hippies.
We stayed for two days in Mindo (one night). On our first day we took a taxi just out of town to the canopy swing. High up in the trees canopies, a Costa Rican guy has decided to place ziplines from one tree to another and then allow paying customers to swing between them. For just $10, you get to experience 13 different canopy zip-wires. You are kitted out with appropriate clothing and harness, and then with a couple of experienced guides your group is treated to some hi-flying swings. Because your up in the trees canopy, these zipline's take you from one tree to the next at heights of at least 300 meters. The views are incredible and you get to see nature right up at where it's all happening.
The ziplines are pretty fast and they say they get a lot faster in the rain, so when it proceeded to downpour we knew we were in for a ride. Thunder and lightning appeared to be right on top of us at one stage, to the point where you could really hear the air cracking around you, yet although we were swinging on metal cables, high up in the canopy, it wasn't the lightning that stopped our fun, but instead the rain. We were traveling so fast that the guides were having trouble stopping us, so after completing perhaps 9 of the lines we headed back. We did have the chance however to pull a few tricks. Mostly when you zipline across you do it solo. But you can zipline with one of the guides and then be placed in ridiculous positions. Alvin was harnessed completely upside down with his legs in the air. I decided to do the superman, lying face down, flat, so as you swing, your really flying. It certainly gave me the best view of the whole day, a birds-eye view you might say. It was a lot of fun despite everyone being completely soaked by the end, but hey, if you go playing in the rainforest you have to expect coming out the other end a bit wet.
On our second day we trekked off to some waterfalls. First you again travel across the trees canopy (but even higher this time) in a cable car which more resembles a metal bucket. Luckily, fantastic views distract you from the potentially dangerous swinging bucket and the lack of saftey ropes to hold onto. At the other side its about an hour or so walk to some great waterfalls and all round beautiful natury things.
The area of Mindo is real rainforest. It's famous for it's birds of which we saw many including a couple of stunning humming varieties. The rest of them I have no idea what types they were - i'm from London - we only have pigeons. Mindo is also teeming with creepy crawlies including some of the largest spiders I have ever seen and which would insist in hiding amongst all our clothing. If you can handle the bugs (and the mosquitos) then you will love this town. There was still loads of things that unfortunately we missed here but you can't do everything in a few days. I guess thats a good excuse for a return visit!!!
The only downside to this trip was that during the constant downpour my camera suffered miserably. Unbelievably the screen is now totally useless and again with no view-finder I have another camera which works but I can't see what the hell i'm taking. In the few years that I have been travelling the world now I have just gone through my third camera due to either damage or theft. I don't have much luck with these electrical devices and I really don't know whether to purchase a new one with the track record I have. If I do decide to buy however, it will be made of titanium and resistant to atomic explosions and nothing less will do!!!
That one night we stayed in Mindo was the very night that Chile was struck by it's devastating Mw 8.8 earthquake. The event sent shock-waves around the world, both seismic and media related. My friend Anne-Marie was on a boat out in the Galapagos that night. It would be three days until I found out that she was okay, apart from the odd bruise where her boat had been swung around in the strong waves that emanated from the earthquake focus. When I returned to Quito I checked my seismograms - a fuzzy squiggle completely dominated the screen for some hours. That was the only consequence of the natural disaster experienced in Ecuador.
A large earthquake is expected to go off in Ecuador at some point in the near future. Myself along with about 14 million Ecuadorians hope that the near future is more geologically speaking than any other type.................
Thursday 8 April 2010
Mindo
Quito, Quito, Quito
Life continues to roll on in Quito. Everythings pretty much settled and I'm now back to some form of vague routine. My Spanish continues to improve, if very slowly, and mostly thanks to the completion of my eight week course in the language. In the last few weeks of the course, we were treated to a trip away. We headed west of Quito for the day, to a small town, Tulipe, out near the cloud forests. We visited some ancient archeological sites, mainly huge deep pits in the ground of different shapes which were representative of something or other. I can't say I learnt or spoke much Spanish, but the expedition was interesting nonetheless. It wasn't just my class that went too, but all the classes of Spanish, from levels one (that was me) up to level seven. It was a bit weird being in the junior group but what can you do.
I haven't yet bothered to check, but I believe I passed the course with flying colours and I should really get off my arse and collect my certificate, if nothing else to make my mother proud.
Im still living in the hostal, although I do have my own room, en-suite bathroom,TV and my recently purchased DVD player, so I can't complain. I guess I should move into a flat at some point but I can't do anything until my work contract comes through..........and now the clock's ticking. I am getting paid for the work that I have done, but it's all technically off the books. The problem I have is the University are stalling over my contract and until that arrives I can't obtain my work visa. That isn't a problem except the fact that if the contract doesn't get sorted in the next few months then my current visa expires and I will be on the first plane home. As I say, the clock's now ticking!!! Of course I have faith that it will get sorted in time, and I can at least see out my year here - I mean a few months to sort out a contract, surely..........oh wait, this is South America!!! I guess i'll have to rely soley on faith for now, or make my way to a travel agent.
Apart from those dramas, the work is very interesting and continually keeps me busy. More volcanic monitoring equipment has arrived from far away shores and that hopefully means i'll get to head out in the field soon, a little more than I have done so far at least. Still, the office work is entertaining and i'm always learning new things, especially with Tunguragua Volcano constantly changing it's mind on whether it wants to erupt or not, so no complaints here.
Friends have been coming and going. Unfortunately, in one sudden week, many people decided to go all at the same time. We held a huge party on the La Guayunga terrace in their honour, a party of booze and music, where many a drunken person could be found - mostly on the floor. Actually some of those people have now returned and i'm continually making new friends from all parts of my life, be it in the hostal, at work, at Spanish School etc etc, so i'm never short of an amigo to hang out with. I also have my Ecuadorian hermanos (brothers), Jefferson and Santiago who love to party as much as the next man.
I now play football twice a week and with climbing 140 stairs twice a day (our lift at work is broken), at this altitude - i'm getting fit fast. I have been to two Ecuadorian football matches also. The first time I supported Barcelona (Ecuadorian team) but this time I went to watch La Liga. I have now decided to only support La Liga as they are from Quito and it would be wrong of me to support Barcelona, a team from Guayaquil - where I have never actually been. I now currently own the La Liga home shirt (fake of course - it cost me $5) and a giant flag for waving around purposes. La Liga and Barcelona are currently fighting it out for top spot in the top division - Come On You La Liga (doesn't quite have the same ring to it but anyway)!!!
Unfortunately, I have come to grow a huge hatred of three things in Quito and I believe they need a mention, just so anyone thinking of coming to this part of the world is fully prepared for them. One; the smog. Quito is a pretty busy city, with cars filling every road at all times of the day and although the city is high in altitude, it sits, nestled in a valley where the smog just hangs. You notice that your never quite well in Quito and I put it down to that. Little can be done about it, so i'll just move on to point two.
The second; is the change monster. When you go to a cash machine, it well generally give you $20, $10 or $5 bills. However, all of them are impossible to brake. Things are cheap in Ecuador. There's not many things that would cost you more than $5 and so spending these notes is a pure nightmare. No-one appears to have change, even for the smallest amounts. But here's my problem. For example, you will queue in a line for a burger. There are 14 people in front of you. Burgers are say $1. No-one is allowed to give anything but the exact $1 as with anything else. So when I order, $14 behind and hand over a $5 note how do they not have change for me?!? They must I tell you, they simply must. This happens with everything of all amounts of course. Everyone is giving the exact change, yet no vendor has any change to give back out. It's a frustrating conundrum only explainable by some change eating monster, and when I find him - there will be a serious showdown.
The final frustration; is the Ecuadorians - walking. Walking is a simple thing, we learn to do it at just a few years old. Most of us in the world have learnt to walk, and walk faster than a stoned tortoise, but, the Ecuadorians have not. They walk so unbelievably slowly that one time, I kid you not, I actually watched as an ant passed three students walking on the street. It is perhaps a little cruel, but I think it would make a great television show, if you took a random Ecuadorian and placed them on Oxford Street in central London and then just watched. They wouldn't last 30 seconds. It's not just the fact that they walk slowly though, they also believe it to be perfectly normal to take 6 of their friends and all walk in unison, in a line, across the entire pavement. It thus means that walking the streets of Ecuador often involves darting on and off the road like some sort of stunt man. It's not just me who has this issue. All backpackers that I have spoken to have vented their frustration at this. Some have nearly broken down in some sort of compulsive fit while a few have just blown their tops, to the despair and confusion of the poor Ecuadorians who believed they were doing nothing wrong but simply 'walking'. I think the greatest thing about all this (and google it now if you don't believe me), is that the only event that Ecuador has ever won at the Olympic Games - was for speed walking.....................the word 'irony' somehow doesn't quite do it justice. Apart from these three flaws, living in Quito is a joy and it's people are some of the friendliest I have ever met!!!
As life rolled on in Quito, week's passed by with work and weekend parties, so I decided it was time for another trip out of the city. So one weekend, myself and some companions headed west..................for Mindo.
Wednesday 7 April 2010
El Angel
Being a pretty unorganised sort of person when it comes to traveling means either that I just wing it and hope for the best or I travel with someone who has organised the whole thing for me. After the parties of Carnaval and with still a few days off, luckily my work companera and good friend Anne-Marie organised us a trip up north. Along with us, was another young German girl who was on the same student exchange programme as Anne-Marie and a whole Ecuadorian family, some of which were part responsible for organising the student exchange programme, or so I believe.
Normally, when I have travelled the world, I know exactly where I'm going and have some idea what each place is generally all about. On this trip however, I had absolutely no idea what to expect and for most of the many places that we travelled (and stopped through) I still don't actually know where we ended up. I will though try to recall as much as possible.
We only spent a few days away. The first day we travelled up north from Quito. It's pretty amazing the countryside of Ecuador as soon as you extend beyond the borders of the Capital. We stopped off at some scenic viewpoints which often incorporated stunning mountain views and large blue lakes, sometimes with a llama thrown in to complete the Ecuadorian picture. Our journey continued through small towns where the parties of Carnaval continued in the busy plaza's. Our night concluded with a stop by a sunset of sheer gold, and which appeared to me as though the sun was cracking through the sky around it (Iv'e never seen anything like it), before we finally reached the town of Ibarra.
We spent our first night in Ibarra, a relatively large town (population of 151,000), yet though has a very cosmopolitan feel, it still manages to cling to the surrounding mountains and countryside with suprising ease. We arrived at night and were leaving early the next moring so I never really got to experience the true Ibarra, apart from the few glimpses that passed me by.
The next day, we continued north along the Panamericana where the road sweeps and snakes down into the Rio Chota Valley. We stopped off here to take a look around, mainly because the area is quite unique. At 1565m above sea level and due to the geography of the area, the valley is very hot and very dry. A chocolaty river sweeps between cacti covered hills. Here, the inhabitants are dominated by afro-ecuadorians who descended from the the 17th century plantation slaves. Through Carnaval celebrations (still proceeding) we watched as large numbers of afro-ecuadorian locals had fun listening to music and playing in the river to escape the skin-itching heat.
We continued north, past a small town which appeared to be famous only for the intricate carvings in some bushy trees, within the central plaza, before climbing in altitude and further north, close to the borders of Ecuador and Colombia, to our main destination - El Angel.
El Angel is a small Andean village, enfused with Ocher grasses and some very bizarre flora. The village is part of the 16,000-hectare El Angel Ecological Reserve and it was soon easy to see why you would come all this way to see it. We stayed in a famous hostal outside of the village, called Polylepis Lodge. You stay in private wooden lodges, but dine in a large wooden hall, complete with log fire and a very cosy feel. It's needed up here too. At over 3500m in altitude, it stays pretty cold most of the time and particularly at night.
The lodge is surrounded by a unique and very ancient forest, made famous for the odd Polylepis trees which fill the area. Polylepis, otherwise known as 'paper trees' for their thin peeling bark are not the only strange vegetation found in the area. This part of the world seems to attract rare and otherworldy plants often which have characteristics of fuzzy leaves and thick trunks. We took a walk through the forest on the first day with a local guide who explained the history and nature of this eerie place. Our hike, saw us pass through thickly stood trees, round quiet lakes and past some vibrant waterfalls.
After some, heart-warming food we took another walk in the forest but this time at night. We each had a lantern to light our path and with a large group, all followed our guide in single file. I felt that we should have all been wearing long cloaks and chanting some sort of religious prayer to complete the scene but no such luck. We didn't see anything particularly exciting at night that we couldn't of seen (and clearer) in the day, but it was an enjoyable experience.
Although the room was comfortable and warm (many blankets), I found it quite difficulat to sleep at the lodge. I knew the reason - it was altitude. I had never slept at 3500m before and one of the side effects of altitude sickness is being unable to sleep. It wasn't all that bad and I did manage to fall off to sleep eventually, but you certainly notice it at this height, especially when your trying to get some kip.
The next day we took a final hike around the area. This time though, we climbed up one of the surrounding hills and along its crest before making our way back into the forest. At the top, you get the most fantastic views of the deep valleys, filled with tress as far as the eye can see, and which surround you from all sides. After some time we headed back and prepared to leave. Our journey back to Quito was long but we stopped in enough places to save our rear-ends getting too sore. Late at night we arrived back to the capital, where it was back to routine life. The holidays were over - it was time to get back to work..............................
