Weekend away...
Last weekend we had a three day weekend so we decided to take a trip to the tropical cloudforest. It's about 2 - 2 1/2 hours from Quito and it was our very first trip via bus (so far we have gone on trips with other people who have cars). A few other teachers had reccommended this place - it's called El Monte Sustainable lodge in a town called Mindo that's small but growing as a destination because of the great bird-watching, butterflies, orchids and waterfalls.







So... we got up early on Sat. morning and took a taxi to the bus station ~ which was really more like a small parking lot with two buses in it. We thought there might be only one bus (at 8:00) in the morning to mindo(it's sometimes hard to pin people down on details such as price and schedules) and we knew it would be busy because of the holiday weekend. We stood in line to buy our tickets and suddenly someone shouted out "mindo!" and a bus started pulling away out of the parking lot. We saw someone hop on so we ran over to it and hopped on too. There was a young guy manning the door and he seemed to be agreeable to us jumping on the bus without tickets so we looked around and there were about 5 empty seats. As soon as I sat down a man assured me that the seat was 'occupado' as were all the others.

The guy at the door of the bus gave us and another couple some cushions so we could sit on the floor and put our feet in the stairwell (actually one person basically got to sit on the huge dashboard console of the bus). Then the bus proceeded to stop a few more times outside of Quito and about 15 more people got on the bus. So, actually, even though we were on the floor we felt lucky to not have to stand in the aisle and we were very happy that the ride was only 2+ hours and there were amazing views along the way. When we arrived in Mindo, we immediately bought two tickets to return to Quito on Monday with reserved seats.

A person from the lodge picked us up at the bus station and drove us 10-15 minutes down a dirt road. We pulled over next to another car and a white horse and saw that the way to get across the river to the lodge was by a small, hand-powered cable car.
Here's a picture of Chris and I travelling across (one at at time) with our stuff...















The lodge was really wonderful ~ they have six cabanas and they are right on the river so we didn't even need our noisemaker to sleep at night.

They had their own organic garden and served gourmet vegetarian food (and a little bit of chicken and fish if you like that sort of thing). The food was delicious ~ definitely the best we've had (except our own) since we've been in Ecuador.
There was a main lodge where you eat, family style and hammocks, chess, books and a fire at night. Chris found a book (in Spanish) on beekeeping and started talking to the owner about volunteering to come down and start a beekeeping/honey project. At this altitude there are special non-stinging bees that are supposed to make delicious honey.






We went on lots of hikes and walks ~ the price included a guide to take you around and show you all the local plants (right up chris' alley) and he took us out at 6:30 to see the birds before the noise of the day started. We also went on a great, steep uphill hike through the forest to a larger, machine powered cable car that can take you over to the next mountain to hike to a bunch of waterfalls.