Got no time for spreading roots, the time has come to be gone.
And though our health we drank a thousand times, it’s time to ramble on.

• Mon – 2 Jun:
• Quito: Took the spectacular free walking tour with Ovi at Community Hostel (I’ve never been able to stay there but it looks soooo nice!) and had delicious, inexpensive, non-almuerzo lunch at the central market afterwards. And I didn’t do anything else all day. To be fair, it was four hours of walking these crazy Quito hills!

 

• Tue – 3 Jun:
• Quito: I scaled the huge basilica and also talked an Alaskan mom into saling it with her 8-ish-year-old son. They thought it was worth it too =) Quito’s not a very pretty city – I’m beginning to think there are none in Latin America (over a certain size) – so the view is not picturesque but it is cool nonetheless. I also visited the extra touristy and not really worth it Mitad del Mundo, the equator line that is not quite on the equator. After experiencing the fake business, I did not feel like getting to the real deal. Especially when the rain starts, I just can’t care that much.

 

• Wed – 4 Jun:
• Quito: Today included reading for two hours at a cafe and an epic and unsuccessful hunt for low-dose-hormone birth control pills. Email correspondence with UPS indicated that the Ecuadoran Ministry of Health would need to approve my prescription being shipped in from the USA. Well, women aren’t supposed to take the pill after their 35th birthdays anyway, so what better time to give it up than now? (Yes, that is a touch of dejected laziness in my tone.)

 

• Thu – 5 Jun:
• Quito: Morning departure – yawn.
• Mindo: Headed with three fun Londoners to Mindo where we visited the butterfly-eria (we should use words like this in English) and had the worst food ever. The Cafe Mindo even made my juice with non-potable tap water and – SPOILER ALERT – I had horrible diarrhea all night. I also stumbled across a WONDERFUL bagel shop, HummingBagel, where I also was able to fill my water bottle with potable water for free, multiple times, even without buying anything if I wanted, because they know that both drinking water and not using so much plastic are important to life.

 

• Fri – 6 Jun:
• Mindo: The Lonely Planet let me down, yet again. When the guidebook says the walk will take one hour, make sure you confirm that with people who have actually been in the vicinity of the town. Because the walk would take TWO hours and to see the waterfalls an additional FOUR. This is not a suitable walk to start at noon, so I just walked around town instead. For five minutes, until the rain started. I sought shelter in a yummy German-expat-run cafe called La Reposteria. I ate a yummy sandwich on homemade bread and snuggled up to an adorable kitty cat. =)

 

• Sat – 7 Jun:
• Mindo: Breakfast and bus, life of the backpacker.
• Quito: Arrived in Quito and made my way first to the hostel and second to the travel agency CarpeDM (why can’t they have a normal name? I don’t know), where I sold one of my kidneys to book a spot on the Golondrina for an 8-day Galapagos cruise. I have high hopes that this will be a million times better than my Panama-to-Colombia disaster, so naturally we will probably capsize on a small island inhabited by cannibalistic pygmies. I also stocked up on some sundries and relaxed.

 

• Sun – 8 Jun:
• Quito: Attention cities of the world! You know what’s really helpful when you have a bunch of foreign tourists and you intend to close the roads and discontinue public transportation in order to host a marathon? POSTERS! The taxi driver insisted there was loads of propaganda (his word, not mine) on the radio. Because I totally listen to Ecuadoran radio, all the gd time, especially when they start rambling on in their super-fast Spanish for advertisements. Anyway, I luckily found a taxi and made the bus to …
• Chugchilán: It might be in the top five most beautiful places on the earth, it definitely makes my list for this trip. It helps that I sprung for the all-inclusive Black Sheep Inn (for a whopping $35 per night dorm bed – I have the entire second story of the bunkhouse to myself). The style and aims remind me of Utopia in Semuc Champey, Guatemala. They also have kitties!