Playing Catch Up

Mindo

A few weekends ago I went with two friends for a daytrip to Mindo, a small mountain town about an hour drive from Quito. We packed in a full day of zip lining, a visit to a butterfly house, and a tour of a chocolate farm.

 Some of the many butterfly cocoons.

Different parts of the chocolate making process.

The part we didn't get to see at the farm - the drying of the cocoa beans.

Brownies made from the home made chocolate.

Zip-lining through the forrest.

Fútbol

I went to a soccer game one evening with some Ecuadorian and American friends. The game was Barcelona (from Guayaquil, Ecuador…I know, it’s confusing) against Deportivo Quito, one of the teams from Quito (there are multiple). The Ecuadorians we went with are fans of Barcelona, so we sat in that section. When I told my host family (fans of Deportivo Quito), they felt slightly betrayed.

The fans didn’t stop yelling, whistling, and singing the entire game. They also had a guy with a huge drum who was pounding it the whole time. I had never encountered fans that took the game so seriously - the guy in front of me sat down and looked like he was going to cry when the other team scored. The Ecuadorians we went with were definitely more into it than us Americans, but we had a great time, especially eating all the food that kept coming by, such as hotdogs, popcorn, and empanadas.

The police separating the fans.

Quilotoa

A view of Cotopaxi on the way to Quilotoa - remember this volcano for the next blog post!

My program took a day trip to a crater lake in the volcano Quilotoa. We walked 30 minutes down a very steep dirt trail to the gorgeous lake and rented some "kayaks" - the paddles that were provided were made out of wood and very small, making it extremely difficult to move anywhere at all. We paddled very slowly out to the middle of the lake and then back and along the shore. We found some bubbles (some sort of volcanic gas or air trapped underground) rising from the bottom of the lake and seeping out of the rocks on the shore, which we thought was pretty cool.

The walk back up to the top of the crater was extremely difficult. The crater is at 12,000 feet, which is challenging enough, but additionally the trail is probably the steepest I have ever walked up, and it takes roughly 40-50 minutes.

On the road to Quilotoa we passed many beautiful mountains that are not usually visible: