Munched in Mindo

The complete FAILURE of Riobamba to provide any diversions worthy of Claire and I has meant that we have been able to spend a little more time in Mindo than we had planned. Described by the Rough Guide as 'an alpine village nestled in the cloud forest' we were very excited about the various 'activities' on offer, especially the promise of home-made manjar (condensed, condensed milky caramel -like a runny toffee!)

Mindo has been fun as it has a very chilled out vibe and over the weekend was full of Ecuadorians heading out from Quito to traipse around the cloud forest and bird watch.

We decided to, erm, go for a slightly more adrenalin filled weekend that involved us battling white water rapids in tractor inner tubes, roped together with a group of evangelicals from Texas (more later...) and hurling ourselves off the tops of trees on ziplines a la Superman.

The overwhelming theme of the last few days has been the complete ravaging of our legs thanks to the very vicious Mindo mosquitos. Claire summed it up by saying that it looked like we had the plague...
These were yesterday's offering - we are even more ravaged today! Our Spanish has improved enough to go to chemists so we are now the proud owners of some medicinal liquid which we have no idea about but is being liberally applied left right and centre.

The tubing was Milla's idea after having done something similar in Laos and involved us whizzing down the river here on 5 tractor inner tubes lashed together. What we hadn't expected that we would be joined by a group of evangelicals from Texas who had spent the last 10 days in Quito 'healing the poor.' We managed to keep straight faces, which is hard for Claire at the best of times thanks to The Elastic Face, when the rather large woman next to me kept on shouting 'Glory, glory, glory to God in his greatness' whenever we got a bit wet. As we were clambering out of the river, a girl about my age who had seemed rather friendly , told me that I had 'a child-like faith ' (makes a change from child-like FACE) and that she wanted to heal me and open up my ears and mouth to God. Of course the British politeness held firm and I have been duely blessed. Now why didn't she approach Claire....

Ziplining was incredibly good fun but SCARY. Trusting the harness around your waist to prevent you from falling 250m into the bowels of the forest is a big ask but we survived! Claire even went backwards and upside down. I however was somewhatmore restrained. No photos though!

Hasta Luego!