The town of Mindo is located about an hour north of our community. It sits surrounded by the cloud forest, its birds, and multiple waterfalls. It is one of the most touristed towns in Ecuador and is loved by hikers, birdwatchers, and chocolate enthusiasts alike.
The town of Mindo and our hostel gave our travelers a well deserved break. The hostel is a rustic lodge with a swimming pool, WiFi, very comfortable beds, and hot showers. Our group got a nice cabin with multiple rooms so our group could enjoy both privacy in their rooms and a hangout place in the living room that we shared. The hotel did our laundry so we all felt (and smelled) so much better after that!
Our hostel.
Since our rooms wouldn’t be ready until the afternoon, we left our luggage at the reception and headed to a zipline over the canopy of the cloudforest with Mindo Ziplines Tour. It was a fantastic experience—and one that I didn’t dare film from the cable for fear of dropping my phone.
Ziplining over the canopy!
After the zip lines, the leaders went to run a few errands and gave the students some free time to explore the town and find a place for lunch on their own. Two hours later, we met at the central plaza and returned to the hotel.
Students enjoying some fresh coconut water.
We finished our first night in Mindo with a craft chocolate experience at ChocoArte where we learned about the art of turning a cocoa plant into chocolate, cocoa powder, brownies, or even cosmetics & honey. We’re proud to say all students were able to understand all the explanations that Jacqueline (our chocotour guide) gave us in Spanish.
Students peeling some cocoa seeds while I pet a kitten in the background.
Our second day started with some scrambled eggs, juice, and bread at 8 a.m. followed by a taxi ride to our guides to begin our excursions. Thirty minutes later, we started tubing down one of the rivers that surround the town; it was a thrilling hour full of fun, excitement, and constant splashes of cold water. Our tubing guides then treated us to some snacks and took us to the second phase of our morning adventures— canyoning. Canyoning is the name adventure guides in Ecuador give to “rapelling down a waterfall”; not everyone opted to do it since some of our students were still chilled from the tubing.
That evening we had a vicious game of Foshbowl before finishing our stay in this magical piece of Ecuador with a fancy meal by the riverside at Mindo Gardens.
Tomorrow we will return to Las Tolas to start our homestay week.
Abrazos desde Mindo,
Nicolás, Claire, & the Language Learning Ecuador 2017 crew
PD: You can also follow our adventures by following the hashtags #LLEC2017, #goputney, #goputney2017 on Instagram (the first one is specific to our program, the other two are for all Putney programs including ours).