Back to Quito, Real Football, and Mindo

Once we returned from a miserable overnight bus to Quito, we found a hotel fast and headed to the stadium to buy tickets for the Soccer match between Ecuador and Bolivia. Thank god Ecuador won because there were some roudy ass Ecuadorians and in the case of a loss, the first recipients of their wrath would have been the foreigners. It was an awesome experience and we had phenomenal seats and I'm sure Andy and I blended in perfectly by occasional shouting "vamos Ecuador" and mumbling along with the Ecuador war chants.

The next 2 days were relatively relaxed, though slightly frustrating as we tried to work out payment for the Golapagos tour we had booked. I'm not sure if I mentioned that previously, but if not, well, we're spending the last week in the Galapagos! Yeah baby, yeah! Andy and I booked a last minute tour in Cuenca, but because it was so last minute we had to pay cash. That meant that we had to keep taking massive amounts of dough out of ATMS over a three day period, and Andy was having problems with his. It was a huge headache and relatively nerve racking having that much cash around, but in the end we marched into the bank, dropped a wadd of 20's on table and said, see you on the boat bitches.

With that out of the way we decided to take a 3 day trip to Mindo, a quaint little town about 2 hours outside of Quito. Once we got off the bus we were asked by a nice Mindo chica with great English if we wanted to share a taxi into the town. We agreed, although the taxi turned out to be a motorcycle with what looked like a large wheel barrow attached to the back. Once again not one of the safest things we've done, but I think we've been sufficiently desensetized to the dangers Ecuador provides for our daily lives. The trip turned out to be rather serendipitous however as that chica, Giselle, turned out to be a daughter of the biggest family in Mindo, related to a good 60% of the town. She showed us a good hotel, met us the next day with her sister and her sister's American boyfriend, and the 3 of them showed us all of Mindo from an insiders perspective. They took us first to these gorgeous waterfalls that featured insanely insane cliff diving and an only slightly less insane water slide with a large drop. We opted for the water slide although the water was dangerously cold and deterred us from a second go round. Andy and I then did a canapy tour, which though originated in Costa Rica, has made it's way to Mindo. It's pretty much zip lines that whip you over the jungle, hundreds of feet in the air. Freaking amazing! That night they hosted us at their apartment and gave us some Salsa lessons. The nextday we headed to a butterfly farm, a lovely way to spend the morning, before heading back to Quito. These 3 days we had in Mindo were some of the best we've had so far in Ecuador. It was amazing to be shown the city from an insider's perspective. There's so much more I'd like to write about it, but haven't got the time. Hopefully the pictures will suffice.

There are more pictures, and I had to open a second album. Here's both links:

http://picasaweb.google.com/etanofrane/Ecuador2#
http://picasaweb.google.com/etanofrane/Ecuador#