Mindo and back in Quito

I managed to make it back to Quito in time this past weekend to head out to the town of Mindo for the weekend with 7 other students from my school. I arrived in Quito at 5:15 a.m. on Saturday morning, came home and repacked and left again by soon after 7 a.m. Mindo is set in the midst of a cloud forest which basically means green mountains that often are surrounded by misty clouds. Very beautiful.

It was an insanely high energy weekend after almost no sleep so I´m paying for that a little bit now. We went tubing down the Mindo river (which was FREEZING cold) - 7 tubes tied together with two guides. This was border line white water rafting but in tubes. Kind of scary but really fun. We went to a lodge with a 'frog concert' that turned out to be a bit of a rip off especially since it couldn't hold a candle to the night canoe in the Amazon. But we did see a tip of wood that when decomposing glows in the dark! Amazing bioluminescence. That was really worth the $3.50 entrance fee altogether. Sunday we rose at 6 a.m. and headed out bird watching with a guide. We saw quite a few birds including 3 different varieties of toucans, 2 quetzals. Incredibly beautiful. And it was a gorgeous morning for a hike.

I had planned on going ziplining through the canopy but just didn't feel like it so 3 of us took the apparently tame route of hiking more with our guide and checking out a butterfly farm. Our hike down was actually a little treacherous and my friend Liz just about fell off the mountain. But the worst moment would be the ant attack. We had to walk for quite a while over swarms of ants, big ones, that decided to climb up our legs and bite us. So I now have 10-12 nasty bites on my legs. Stupid ants. We also managed to hike to one waterfall in a series of 5 before we ran out of time and needed to catch our bus back to Quito.

Now I'm back in Quito for my last week of studies. Yesterday I had lunch at Daniel Moya's family's place and got to meet Juan who will be a first year student at GC this coming fall. We had a nice time and it was nice to have a blending of English and Spanish around the table. And now I need to get to my sermon preparation for Sunday! And thankfully, they will be translating for me so I don't need to attempt writing a sermon in Spanish just yet.