Mindo

So, Nele and I went to Mindo last weekend, on Friday and Saturday. It is seriously the tiniest tourist town ever. If it weren't for the tourists, it would just be like any other small village. There's one main road that's paved (it's only about 200m long), and all the other roads off this road are dirt roads. Below is a picture of the main road. There are cafes, tour agencies and little shops all along the main road.Below is a road just off the main road (you can see the main road in the background). It's quite a contrast. There are a couple of cows at the side, I don't know if you can see it. And the houses are also built in stark contrast to each other. There are nice, properly built houses next to old shacks (i.e. built with random bits of timber and corrugated iron, where the roof is likely to leak). You can sort of see it in the photo. I didn't take too many photos of the houses because I felt rude, I mean, it's someone's house, not a tourist attraction!
This is the hostel in which we stayed. It's also the oddest hostel I've ever stayed in. I mean, it's fine, it was clean and comfortable, but it looks like it's been built with random bits of materials. Not that I have a problem with it, I just haven't come across anything like it before. And they've utilised every single bit of space. They've put beds in every little bit of space they could find, so instead of individual rooms, you have to walk through one room to get to another. There are private rooms as well (like a double room), but they're not that private. Nele's bed was next to a windowless window (i.e. it was a hole in the wall). I don't know why, because all the other sides had windows, just not at her end! I suppose the plants act as a window/cover (see top picture). A butterfly managed to get itself trapped, and it couldn't get out as it had flown to my end of the room (where there was a window). It had been fluttering in the same place for at least an hour, and it looked so frantic and distressed. I had to rescue it, so I moved it to Nele's side of the room and I have never seen anyone (or anything?) look so relieved as it clung onto some plants.

On Saturday, we took a cable car type thing across the gorge. We got great views of the cloud forest. They're called cloud forests because they're high altitude rainforests (ish), and because of the altitude and the amount of rainfall, the forests create clouds! Pretty awesome stuff!

We went hiking (it's a really nature-y place, apparently all the birders come here). After doing Rucu Pichincha, this was so easy. It was a waterfall hike, so we walked along the tracks and visited several waterfalls. Here we are at a waterfall.

We had planned to go swimming in the waterfall pools, but when we got there, the water was freezing! I managed to go as deep as my thighs. My legs were totally numb! It was very refreshing though. Below (left) is the largest waterfall we visited. It's not that big, but it was the biggest in the area. The people there actually stood underneath the waterfall. The locals believe that waterfalls have healing properties, so I think that's what they were doing.

I didn't get that far. Here's the photo of my attempt. It was rather dismal, but I was freezing. Plus the spray didn't help. It was fun though!

Here's the general photo of the forest (I think it's a protected reserve, so that's good), and the cable car thing which we rode. I could go on forever about safety, but I won't. I mean, we were safe, but the workers have really bad workplace health and safety conditions. Seriously, the woman who rode with us on the carriage stood on the outside (even though there was room on the inside for her). She was hanging on to the bars! It was so dangerous, she could've fallen off at any point in time! But I suppose everyone does that kind of thing here...