Lindo Mindo

More Ecuador travels!  Last weekend the whole crew plus Iris, our friend from Iceland, went to Mindo.  I realize I've been throwing out a lot of cities and places so I made this map in case you'd like to follow along.  All the places I've been and I'm hoping to go are on the left, just click them and they'll be highlighted on the map.

So yes, Mindo.  We left early Saturday morning and a 2 hour ride was no problem compared to our marathon last weekend.  We stayed in another tree house-like hostel that had great food.  That's mosquito netting above my bed.  We all fell victim to at least a few bites over the course of the weekend so it was definitely merited.

 This is a shot of the girls' hostel.  We met all kinds of people here.  2 guys from England, a girl from Germany, a guy from Oregon, and a girl from Massachusetts.  Very friendly people that we hung out with Saturday night.

 I'm pretty sure every hostel in Ecuador has hammocks.  These were right outside our room.  Mindo is famous for their orchids and they were growing all over the place including on our porch.

 We rested for a couple hours, had lunch, then went to see some serious butterflies.  Mindo is known for their butterfly breeding and it was interesting to see the process.

They have a huge shelf with what must have been over a thousand cocoons push-pinned into cork.  They have dozens of varieties of butterflies and each has a unique cocoon.

 I got lots and lots of pictures of beautiful butterflies.  If you want more let me know!

 These huge guys were the easiest to pick up.  You just dabbed some banana on your finger and scooped them up, they were all over the place.  The smaller more colorful ones played hard to get.

 I was lucky to get this picture.  We probably took 20 before we had a decent one with the wings open.

 After the butterflies we drove straight up to the zip lines.  Someone saw a sign that said we were in the "Mindo Cloud Forest" and the name is fitting.  We zipped over the valley on 11 different lines and all around us we could see the peaks hiding in the clouds.  It was really very beautiful.  I didn't bring my camera on the journey but there are some high quality pictures of me upside down that I hope to have on facebook soon.  
Here's a picture down the first cable.

 Our hostel was about 100 paces from the Mindo Chocolate factory so clearly we had to take a tour.  They grow many of their ingredients and make only dark chocolate.  We learned all about the process of making chocolate and how different flavors are achieved.

 Above is their garden.  Among the things they grow are fresh ginger (they have a great ginger dark chocolate) and coffee.  They grow banana trees for shade because the leaves are huge.  I learned that banana trees grow to full maturity in one year, give one bunch of bananas, and never produce them again.

To the left is the beginning of the chocolate process.  They call it fermentation.  Basically the beans start in

 this creamy substance that has to all seep out.  The process gives off a lot of heat and the juice is collected to make delicious things like "chocolate honey" and barbeque sauce.  To the right is the entire fermentation process.  Beans start in the top box (pictured above) and after a few days they're moved to the middle and finally to the bottom.  Then the beans are moved to long, flat drying racks for a few weeks until they're dark brown when you cut them open.

 Here's the collection of the "cacao juice" draining from the top box.

 The beans are separated from their shells and the result is called "cocoa nibs."  We got to try them, they're very bitter and don't really even resemble chocolate.  The nibs are ground then mixed with water at a very high temperature to make chocolate liquor.  This liquor is pressed to separate the chocolate from its cocoa butter (which is mostly fat).

Here you can see the cocoa butter and pressed chocolate on the table.  They use a process called tempering on the marble table that sounded similar to marble table fudge folding that I saw in Michigan as a kid.

 Francisco, our fearless leader.  This guy was awesome.  He's from southern Ecuador but he lived and studied English in the states as a kid so he speaks fluently.  He knows a lot about chocolate.

 Obviously the best part of the tour was the tasting.  The little cups on the right are pure 100% bitter chocolate.  We tasted that first by itself but I could only handle a little bit.  We then mixed it with the pure sugar on the lower left.  It was so cool to mix the different flavors in my mouth and essentially make what we know as "chocolate."  We also mixed the bitter chocolate with red pepper (on the plate) and tried it with ginger (top cup).  The other two cups have the chocolate honey and the barbeque sauce which were both awesome.

 Here's my spoon with the chocolate, sugar, and red pepper.  Delicious.

 They have a little cafe in the lobby of the factory where many of us got coffee, hot chocolate, and brownies.  I went for the fresh-made ginger ale.  Easily the best ginger ale I've ever had.

We had dinner upon our return to the hostel and I learned a new card game from the English chaps called Janef.  It's an Israeli game that kind of resembles rummy mixed with go fish and "golf" (the card game).  We also played some Cuarenta.  After cards we went to a bar for an hour or so then hit the sack.

 Sunday morning we went on a waterfall excursion.  It started with a traverse across the valley in a little cart that crawls across this cable.  I loved it.

 Here are the guys just before we rolled across.

 The cart moved pretty fast.  I'd guess we were about 200 feet above the river at the center of the valley.  The view was spectacular.

Upon reaching the other side we chose to hike the long trail to one big waterfall.  The path was lined with all kinds of fun rainforest vegetation.

 Spots like this reminded me of our Philmont trek through the rockies.  Very steep drops down to the river.  We couldn't ever see it but we always heard it.

 Every once in a while we came across little water spouts running down the valley.  This one had some inviting fallen trees across it so I did a little climbing.

 After hiking for about an hour we came to this staircase over the smaller of the two waterfalls that make up Cascada Reina, or "Queen Waterfall."  After climbing the stairs we all took off our shoes to wade through the very rocky water toward the main waterfall.

 I wish I could have captured how amazing this place was.  The mist from the waterfall latched onto the moss on the rocks all around us and sparkled in the sun.  Very cool.

There was a natural pool at the bottom of the falls so of course we all jumped in.  It was freezing.

Worth it though.

Here's the whole crew on our hike to the falls.  Good times all around.

We headed back to the hostel for lunch and hit the road.  We got back to Quito, went to mass, and I crashed.  I think this has been my best week of classes, we have a very strict teacher and she is very effective.  In other news we're taking salsa classes twice a week now and we went out to a salsa club on Wednesday night that our teacher recommended.  It was a lot of fun, but I'm definitely hoping to improve over the next five weeks.  Crazy to think that our third week is already coming to a close!  We're going to the equator tomorrow during class and heading to Rosa's parents' farm this weekend, "La Finca" on the map.  Looking forward to some familiar Midwestern sights and some relaxation.  Post to follow!