Casa de Cecelia, Mindo, Ecuador

a night out in quito

quito

and here we have the jungle cruise...thank you walt, thank you.-mindo

michael meets mindo

view from our hostel in mindo...

kim hiking up to the waterfalls (las cascadas)-mindomichael awaiting breakfast with a smile-mindo

Mindo, Ecuador June 29

hello, friends! we have been in the birdwatcher´s paradise of Mindo for the past few days staying at a place called Casa de Cecelia. After a frantic trek around Quito with all of our gear in search of an elusive bus station (we were following an out of date Lonley Planet guide book), we arrived in Mindo in high style, paying a taxi driver $40 to drive us the entire way from Quito. A bargain by our New York standards, and it made our cabby´s day.

We are almost a week into the trip at this point and our gastrointestinal systems are adjusting. our spanish is terrible, but we´ve perfected the phrase "mi español es muy malo". We´ve befriended a nice American couple from Michigan at a hostel called Le Quetzal. Barbara roasts her own coffee beans, makes homemade strawberry ice cream, and processes her own chocolate, too.

An errant ziplock bag of granola attracted a long-tailed visitor to our ´habitación´ last night. We successfully warded of the hungry creature by erratically shining our mini-mag flalshlight around the room and in general making many foolish hissing and clapping sounds. Our sleep was restless to say the least. Kim had Phil Collin´s "One More Night" stuck in her head and I came up with a touristy t-shirt slogan "A rat crawled in my window...in Mindo".

Blog Successfully Created

Hola! As part of our preparations for an adventure in Ecuador, we have created this blog. The name of this blog is "Hola Hola". Another name that we considered was "The Blue Footed Bloogie".

We will leave Brooklyn on Monday, June 22. First stop: New Jersey. We'll fly out of Newark on Tuesday afternoon, June 23. After overnight layover in Panama, we'll fly into Quito, the capitol city of Ecuador, arriving on June 24. We expect to have internet access in Quito and will post our first true blue post then.

Till then,
K & M