Excursion to Mindo, a small town about a couple of hours from Quito. Departure at 7 a.m….. Me mueroooo!
The group is well assorted, 2 Italian ladies in their sixties, 2 German couples, a ‘very nice’ American girl and the two of us.
Obviously the Germans are hobnobbing, speaking in their suave language 😆.
The American is being American and I, who have absolutely no desire to speak Italian, keep to myself…. For the first time since the beginning of the trip 😅
On the outward journey to Mindo the American girl starts to get agitated… she has lost her phone. She calls her sister with the phone lent her by Anna, who tells her via the ‘find my phone’ function that her smartphone is exactly in our bus.
She starts searching, on the seats, underneath, in the glove compartments, under the carpet, in the petrol tank….
Nothing, the phone is not to be found… we then begin the suspicions and the atmosphere gets a bit heavy….
We arrive at our destination, we get out of the mini-van and while getting out the American lady notices that her phone had fallen between her seat and the one next to it. Obviously it was completely broken…
That’s who had stolen it 😑
The first stop is a bird-watching spot… in the forest.
A myriad of nervously flying hummingbirds appears before us, all different colours, an incredible sight.
In addition to the hummingbirds there are other birds with colourful feathers and beaks, all of them greedy for bananas. As always in Ecuador it starts to rain… yay I missed some rain….
After about an hour we get back on the minibus to go into the forest to visit some waterfalls. The weather is humid, fine rain and quite hot.
We reach the start on the other side of the hill, by a ‘gondola’, powered by a car engine complete with gearbox 😆.
The walk is quite easy, the weather however does not help and soon I find myself completely wet, with my hair making me look like a wet dog 😆
Lunch at a local restaurant and then it’s time to visit a butterfly farm. Huge and colourful.
The way back is a chatter in German and English, not very interesting to be honest… the shower is the only thing I look forward to!!!