I know that I have still to write about my trip to El Oriente, I actually have the blog post written up… I’m just waiting for pictures (hoping they come). So instead I thought I would hit you guys with what I did this past weekend: A last minute trip to Mindo.
When I say last minute, I mean last minute. On Thursday my friend and I had both mentioned that we wouldn’t mind going to Mindo that weekend but I thought nothing of it. I wake up Friday morning with a message from him saying that he actually organized a trip to Mindo and that we were leaving in three hours. Cuando estás en Ecuador, am I right? So I quickly got out of bed, packed a bag and off we went. Mindo is about two hours from Quito by bus. So the trip wasn’t long but it was nice. By the time we had found a hostel it was about 4pm so we were like well what now? One of the many things that Mindo is famous for is a chocolate tour, so naturally that is where we went. The famous chocolate tour of El Quetzal was really interesting. We got a pretty thorough explanation of how chocolate is made, from the cacao to the finished product. I certainly learned a lot. The tour ended with a lot of chocolate samples and the best brownie I have ever eaten in my life. We promptly left not knowing at that time how quickly we would return….
After eating the best brownie I’ve ever had in my life, we went to eat dinner at a local restaurant where I ate the best fish I’ve ever had in my life. Tilapia never tasted so good! The only downside though is that the street dogs would not leave us alone to eat in peace (it didn’t help that one of my friends kept feeding them) but it was a small price to pay for amazing food.
After this I think we went back to the hostel for a bit to chill in their amazing hammocks (I’ve been convinced. I now plan to invest in a hammock) before returning to the chocolate place for drinks. The rest of night was fun and mainly just consisted of chilling and listening to music in the hostel. T’was an interesting night to say the least…
BUT ANYWAY Saturday we got up and the plan was to go tubing. So we ate at an overpriced restaurant for breakfast and then headed down to the river. Tubing was really fun! The river was fast and cold and at one point we almost all fell out of our tubes, but it was a great experience 🙂 Después de eso we went zip-lining over the forest! I forgot to mention that Mindo is in the middle of a cloud forest, which made zip-lining that much cooler. Unfortunately we don’t have any pictures to document these two amazing activities so you’ll just have to imagine us having fun. After a shower/downtime at the hostel guess where we decided to go for lunch? [Dora the Explorer type pause] That’s right! The chocolate place! But let me tell you that chocolate is not the only good thing that they have there… I basically ordered barbacoa pork (and another brownie with ice cream but that’s not important) and it was delicious! One thing I’ve noticed about Ecuadorian food is that I don’t get a lot of meat, at least not as much meat as I’m used to. It’s hard to find a good, big chunk of meat so when this came out of the kitchen
I was very happy. Oh and that juice you see is called Jugo de Mora (blackberry juice). It’s probably the best type of juice I’ve had here in Ecuador but this jugo de mora was better than all the others. And just because you can’t have enough pictures of good food, here’s a picture of the life-changing brownie with some vanilla ice cream and “chocolate honey”
That night consisted of more chilling in hammocks and deep talks before we did one of the coolest things about this trip. While we were hammocking we heard these drums and singing in the background and it turns out that a group of people had started a drum circle down the street. Micah was like “I want to join” so we walked down there and basically all joined the drum circle. It. Was. Epic. It kept expanding as more and more people joined/more and more people stopped to watch.
We planned to go on some sort of tour of the cloud forest the next day but due to the fact that we woke up late it didn’t happen. We got a late breakfast instead. And no we didn’t go back to the chocolate place for breakfast (we totally did). But they had REALLY GOOD FOOD. I got an omelette with homemade bread and it was fantastic. 
Mindo was so chill. The town itself is tiny but it is so relaxing. The humidity is a lot but I found it kind of calming. Even the nightlife, although it wasn’t nonexistent, was very laid back. The whole town was just quite, even though it wasn’t. I don’t know how to explain it but yeah that was Mindo. Nice and peaceful. Even though our hostel owners didn’t like us and threw us major shade at times and the fact that we spent 45% of our time at the chocolate place, I really enjoyed Mindo. Finished off the trip with some choclo con queso because frankly I can never get enough. 
¡Qué viva la aventura! 