Oye

7-19-11

Sometimes in Lumbisí (and other cities), the electricity just turns off.  This is my case right now—I’m sitting in my bedroom, drinking some really good black coffee, while eating pan with peanut butter and the lights go off.  It’s really weird to look out my window and see absolutely no lights in Lumbisí.  I can see the city lights off in the distance from Quito, but other than that- nothing.

Biscotti-making shop on our way to Otavalo.

Otavalo: biggest market in South America; here just some herbs and grains being sold. 

Last night a few of us arrived from a fabulous weekend.  The group of students from Illinois and us other volunteers went to Otavalo early Saturday morning.  Otavalo is a really cool city, known for its huge market (I think the biggest in South America??) and indigenous people.  On the way, we stopped at a famous biscotti-making shop where we ate some delicious home-made biscotti (it was really fun watching them make it!) and drank hot chocolate.  The best part was dipping the biscotti into the hot chocolate; great combination!  Once we arrived in Otavalo, some of us didn’t have much time to shop around since we needed to catch a bus to Mindo and also eat lunch.  It was fun bargaining with the vendors as I bought pretty (WILD!) jewelry. Six of us rushed to eat lunch in order to catch two buses to get to Mindo.  Otavalo is about 2 hours away from Quito and our bus was supposed to leave from Quito right at 4:00PM.  It was not a relaxing afternoon as we had to rush to make it there on time.  After a 2 ½ hour bus ride from Quito to Mindo, we finally arrived to a small, beautiful city. 

Mindo: Cloud Forest; a very small, beautiful town. 

The sketchy-looking hostel we stayed at the first night. 

 It was nice to actually be somewhere other than Lumbisí, Quito, and Tonsupa.  After many hours of traveling in buses, we wandered around the small town of Mindo (Cloud Forest) trying to find the cheapest hostel (there are many).  La Casa de Cecilia hostel looked perfect, with a riving running beside it and an eating area fit for playing cards, was full.  However, the employees here are unbelievably nice (even to people who aren’t staying with them) and called hostels around the area to see if any rooms were vacant.  The woman (Paula) walked us to a hostel she recommended and we resided there.  It wasn’t the nicest place in town (looked pretty sketchy actually), but who can beat $5.00/night? We were all quite hungry, so we walked down the main strip to see all of our food options.  We found a restaurant that had pretty much everything; pizza sounded the best to most of us.  Zack and I were pretty hungry so we ordered the “family” pizza (and of course it was the last one to come;-).  

Zack and I with our huge pizza...

3 beds to a room at the sketchy hotel.  

They weren’t kidding about how big it was…and delicious!  Afterwards, some of us girls were craving coffee, so we decided to head back to La Casa de Cecilia to see if any was brewing.  Don’t worry; Paula welcomed us back to hang out whenever we wanted, even though we didn’t have a room there.  It was already 9:30 PM, so no luck on the coffee being prepared. As we wandered back to our own hostel (I’m not even sure of the name), we came across the “Reggae Bar” where we ordered coffee and played cards. After a few hours, we decided to go back to our own hostel where we shared rooms (3 beds to a room)—it was good enough for sleeping for a night. 

Sunday morning we ate breakfast at the nice hostel (bread, fruit, scrambled eggs, coffee and freshly squeezed juice) and took a tour of the waterfalls in the surrounding areas.  I didn’t think about hiking around, so I wore flip flops (big mistake…again!) and didn’t pack any shorts, so I wore a beach dress. 

Michelle and I: the difference here is that she was prepared to hike.  Hiking shoes, shorts, and a backpack.  Me, on the other hand, wore a dress and flipflops.  Funny joke the whole time we were hiking. 

 It made life more interesting for sure.  The area that we hiked was beautiful with a couple of waterfalls and a slide that dropped us into the cold, icy water.  After hiking back up the mountain, the rest of the group took a zip lining tour (and by this time, it was rainy and cold).  We all were starving by the time they were finished so we went to a restaurant on the main strip.  It’s funny to me that we crave non-Ecuadorian food; we pretty much all ordered Mexican food. Haha.

Marjorie, the guy we met in Mindo, Vanessa, Zack and I drinking hot chocolate  and playing cards in the nice hostel. 

Mindo is such a cool place that we all wanted to stay longer than just one day, but two people in our group needed to get back to Lumbisí Sunday night.  The rest of us (5 people) asked around to make sure there were more busses leaving early on Monday morning (around 4-5AM) that we could take to make it on time to the classes in the morning.  Indeed, there were busses at that time so we stayed another night! (we were even able to get rooms in La Casa de Cecilia). Paula told us that one of her other co-workers would take us to the main road outside of Mindo at 3:40AM to catch the 4:15 AM bus on the side of the road to get to Quito.  We made a plan!  Three of the other girls and I went to a Chocolate tour afterward where we learned the history of chocolate and were able to try some samples and also their home-made brownies and ice cream.  Afterward we bought some snacks and drinks for the bus ride home that would be in the morning and went back to the “Reggae Bar” along with a friend we met who was staying at the same hostel with us. After a few cups of great hot chocolate and some card-playing, we were spent and went to sleep in La Casa de Cecilia.  We awoke at 3:30 AM and drove to where a bus would pick us up on the side of the road. It was cold and we were just standing on the side of the road, waving down anything that looked like a bus that could take us to Quito.  We had quite a good time doing this, even though it was so early in the morning.  I think all of us were a little slap happy; we laughed a lot. After flagging down about 15 busses (and dump trucks and semis) and none of them picked us up (don’t worry; we wouldn’t have gotten into a dump truck even if it stopped for us) after waiting 1 ½ hours on the side of the road, we hopped into a taxi from the hostel and slept for a few more hours in the same rooms that we had rented from before. That morning was stressful as we had to call a bunch of people to tell them we wouldn’t be at the vocational course and/or helping delivering food to the elderly.  Ecuador=change of plans. For breakfast we ate pancakes, eggs, fruit, juice and coffee.  We wandered back to our hostel to pack up our things and drifted off to explore what Mindo had to offer us.  Since we had time to kill (we decided to take the “real” bus where we actually buy tickets from a bus station for a 3:00pm bus), we went to the lamest orchid nursery ever.  Someone’s guidebook said there would be orchids that were 5 meters tall—we saw ones that needed to be shown with a magnifier.  Lame.  I think the tour lasted 10 min (maybe) and cost $2.00/person (which is expensive, right?), but the orchids were nothing to shout about.  With our disappointment we went to a bar that was open-air and had swings all around it; pretty cool.  Some people ordered Batidos while I waited for the chocolate/coffee place to open.  After about an hour of waiting, finally we went into the great-smelling store where we could look at really pretty jewelry (I bought some really cool multi-stone earrings) and sit down, eat a great vege-sandwich (onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and avocado, grilled, with cheese) and a cup of home-made coffee and brownies.  What could be better than that, right? By the end of our great afternoon, we took the buses home to Lumbisí. Great adventure!