Mindo, and everything that's changed my life since

For my father, who wanted me to write more...and obviously forgot which child he was asking.

Seeing is believing.

Ok, I know we usually like to save the best for last.

But this time, I'm just going to come right out and hit ya with it: that photo is me.

WITH EL PRESIDENTE DE LA REPUBLICA, Rafael Correa.

From left to right, that is: Brianna, travel and TESOL buddy, Señor Correa, president of Ecuador, and me, Nikki, perhaps the most blessed woman alive.

To say that Mindo did not disappointment would be a gross understatement. But the weekend actually began before Mindo, on Friday, when I had the wonderful pleasure of celebrating yet again el cumpleaños de mi hermana, Andreita.

Andrea's friends (as she is my hermana anfitriona, or host sister, these are my amigos anfitrionos) threw her a marvelous farra de disfraces, or costume party, on Friday night. Being as I didn't happen to bring my costume closet along with me to Ecuador, I had to do a *little* shopping and some creative borrowing in order to pass, more or less, as a secretary.

Mi hermana hermosa como una hada

Carla y yo en la noche de farra, where I received my official title as "la gringa de andreita" - Andrea's little white girl

The party drew these kinds of reactions amongst our friends...¡que bomba! ¡bacan! ¡que genial! …it was a fantastically fun night, and I finally got in some authentic latin american salsa. Literally, I danced the night away...

Boys, you really should learn to Salsa. Just sayin'.

Needless to say, little miss Cinderella over here caught about 3.5 hours of sleep before her first big day of travel.

Brianna and I were set to head for Mindo via la Ciudad de Mitad del Mundo (City at the half of the world, aka the Equator) at nine in the morning on Saturday. At least, that was our plan when a wonderful EIL staff member, Myriam, set us up with an all-inclusive weekend in Mindo on Monday.

What actually happened? Well, Friday after classes, Brianna and I headed to the mall to arrange for a workable Ecuadorian phone and enough money en efecto (cash) for our weekend. This is where our troubles began. The cash part went off without a hitch, thankfully, as the ATMs can be quite temperamental with American cards. However, the simple idea of putting an Ecuadorian SIM card in my phone led to an overnight stay in the mall for my iPhone, some confusing Spanglish conversations about bandwidths, a visit to the Apple store (here, "MundoMac") in the mall when it opened at 10 am on Saturday, and eventually the $50 purchase of the crappiest Ecuadorian phone available with 12 minutes of talk time included.

Not to mention, I then had to be able to call our Mindo guide, Dani, on the phone in Spanish. For those of you with foreign language experience, you will understand that the phone conversation in your second language is possibly THE most intimidating, challenging test of your language skills. The sum total of three calls I made to Dani that weekend each ended without a proper goodbye...because I was still stuck in my head between adios, chau, hasta luego y gracias. Dear me, he must have thought I was one rude gringa until he met me. :)

When Brianna and I finally got on the road - or rather, the bus - it was nearing one o'clock in the afternoon. Together we had our essentials - she had my socks and a twice-borrowed jacket, I had the use of some of her toiletries and backpack space for my jacket. The bus took us from the main street that connects us (she and I live about five blocks apart), la Avenida America, to la terminal norte, or the main, north-most terminal of Quito. From here we made an easy transfer (thank you, LonelyPlanet guidebook!) to a bus bound for la Mitad del Mundo, the city built as an attraction over the Equator. A little less than an hour later, we were standing in the middle of the earth. (Almost. In reality, the equator is located about 250 meters from la Mitad del Mundo, on a sacred indigenous site.)

"holding" the 3-ton globe on top of the indigenous museum

that's not a dividing street line, that's a dividing hemisphere line!

I am equal parts north and south hemisphere in this moment :)

Looking down at La Ciudad de Mitad del Mundo from the lookout atop the museum...North and South are clearly visible!

Nothing but blue skies here

This particular spot on the Equator is located in a somewhat dry, warm valley north of Quito

winding away in the opposite direction from the city

well, you know who we are by now

the world above me

the mountains beside me

las artesanias below me

Walking into the gates of the city (yes, you must pay to visit the "Equator") Brianna and I met a fellow American traveler, Ben, by his asking us for the bus schedule back to Quito. Unable to help him, we quickly engaged in an English conversation about where we all were from. Ben is traveling Latin America solo...from San Jose, California! Funny odds, but as they say in Small Soldiers, everybody's got to be somewhere.

Ben, Brianna and I explored the city quickly in the interest of time, and in determined search of water! The Equator was warm and beautiful, but we had had nothing to eat since a Cinnabon in the mall that morning as we sorted out our chaotic pre-travel mishaps. Unfortunately, when we finally encountered some sealed water bottles, they opened to our dismay with the taste and smell of sulfur water! Disgusted, we tossed our deceptively cool bottles in the trash and proceeded to the central attraction: the indigenous museum with a 3-ton globe atop a lookout, located directly over the "equatorial" line. The museum  charged a $3 entrance fee, which is a lot considering it is really just for the use of the escalator up. The stairs down lead guests through an overly-kitschy display of fake artifacts, but for one-timers like us, it was worthwhile.

After our quick buzz through the city, we were forced to head back out to try to catch the next bus for Mindo. We split up with Ben, who was Quito-bound, and waited a little over half an hour on the side of a rotunda for a suitable means of transport. Interspersed in our conversation were the incessant honks of every male driver viewing us as a roadside display. When the bus came, it was refreshingly air-conditioned with comfortable reclining seats and a low $2 fare. Brianna and I slipped into two of the last (separate) seats, and I all-too-quickly sunk into a dreamy slumber next to an Ecuadorian girl with a Jansport backpack who reminded me of a younger version of my sister-in-law (by that, Monica, I mean she appeared to be around 18 or 20!).

I woke up from my 2-hour bus nap on the side of the highway, at the top of the 2- or 3-mile road leading to Mindo. Thankfully, a van driver came along quickly and Brianna and I squeezed on, still not having made successful contact with our guide, and about 3 hours behind our estimated arrival time of two o'clock.

Once in Mindo, things just came together. We made contact with our guide on my junky little movistar phone and while we waited for him to walk around the corner to us, we observed the town of Mindo. It has exactly one main street, and one park plaza. It has more tour offices than nearly anything else, and it gives off such a prevalent, permeable feeling of calm that Brianna and I had to conclude that it would be impossible to feel stressed in Mindo. The streets were full but quiet, unlike the diesel-fumed streets of Quito, and despite the Ecuador versus Venezuela game blaring from inside shops. There are no paved streets in Mindo, and no English teachers (I asked a restaurant owner later). All around Mindo are the northeastern Andes, but these are uniquely topped with jungle undergrowth that thrives within the clouds that hug them, giving Mindo the famous reference to the Cloud Forests.

Our hotel was almost too much for words. We took a wonderful video to show to you, but as I'm currently experiencing technical difficulties in uploading it, pictures will have to suffice for now:

our fully-functioning hammock

all bug-sprayed up and ready to go!

big bed, lumpiest pillows on earth

"we live in the jungle!!!"

cabin in the woods

green, pink, and purple, all in one fern

nice, but not ours. Our hotel front? Jungle!!

Cuuute...but not, technically, a part of the hotel

THE plaza of Mindo

beautiful wood buildings

dusky streets

It was too late, Dani told us, to do anything that night except for el Concierto de las Ranas. Well, we'd never heard of it, but as it was the only thing to do, we said we were on board! The Frog Concert, as it is translated, completely rocked our socks off. We met our driver for the weekend, Giovanni (who may very well be THE nicest man on earth, with a smile that defines friendly), and drove to a little-marked path somewhat up the main road. From there we walked down a path lit dimly by the twilight and entered a cozily-lit outdoor meeting hall. A Spanish environmentalist proceeded to explain to us the nature of our environment: an entirely-native, but pure, habitat that had been built and carefully preserved in order to attract fantastic species of frogs, toads, spiders, insects, bats, rare lightning bugs, and glowing phosphorescent microbacteria that are only present between 80 and 90 percent humidity. After a brief introduction, we took a night tour of the place!

nighttime frogs dislike flash

the brown kind

the green kind

the see-through kind

the eight-legged kind ("non-venimous")

the just-plain-scary-and-hairy kind

the camouflaged kind

the home-maker kind

After this amazing "concert," Brianna and I got a home-cooked meal across the street from our "hotel" at our guide's home, and our Cinnabon-tinged stomachs rejoiced.

at laaaast...my love has come along...

We passed out like logs on Saturday night, but woke up nice and early (for the weekend, considering our usual wake-up time is six!) to get ready for a long day beginning with breakfast at eight. 

banana batido, mermelada de guayaba, y melon y papaya con huevos! (Thank God, first breakfast besides cereal I've had since being here!)

the many "free-range" roosters and chickens of Mindo

The day from here out was a blur of delirious fun. We trucked off with Giovanni and Vicente, our guide, to the Canopy first. Canopying in the Andes of Mindo was my first zip-line experience -- we were lucky to have such fun, complimentary guides as Daniel and Jonathan...

Our guide from Mindo, Vicente, came too -- he held the cameras!

sportin' the harness

I don't think any canopy in the world tops this view :)

Daniel, at ease

sometimes we "sat"

sometimes we bounced!

picture pose before the last cable - #7? 8?

We're gonna do this one "superman"

Almost ready

superchica! 

it's just like flying :)

Brianna coming in for the landing

If the videos will add, I'll show you what it looks like to go upside-down later ;)

From the Canopy we went, exhilarated, down the mountain a little to Mundo Mariposas, the famed butterfly garden of Mindo. I got to hold butterflies on my finger and watch as they ate banana off of it!

Entering the garden

Butterfly eggs - I got to hold some later! The staff collect them off of all the plants and group them by species. The man looked like he was handling them fairly roughly, so I asked, and he put some in my hand so I could feel how durable they are -- amazing!

All real cocoons! Some look like green leaves, some look like dead leaves, from tiny to small.

After this serene environment, we walked across the street (literally!) to...tubing! Mindo does "tubing" as a sort of alternative to rafting by tying together big black innertubes and sending you off down the Rio Kia with a guide who steers, not with a paddle, but with his feet -- our guide, Ramone, had the trademark "spiderman" move of jumping horizontally off the side of rocks.

getting pocos instruciones

done! happy! soaked!

after-lunch: la babylonia afuera

con margaritas aguardientes de matacuya :)
(passionfruit Ecuadorian-style margaritas)

After lunch, Brianna and I went in search of famous chocolate at El Quetzal and famous coffee at Vivero. Chocolate? Success! We chowed down on brownie and helado (ice cream), and bought some goodies to take home...but not too many, they were expensive! The coffee? Not such a success. But really, more like a stroke of fate.


In search of coffee up the dusty roads of Mindo, we were forced to turn back into town empty-handed. Nothing on the road matched the map our guide had given us. As we were walking down the street, a man stops us and says politely, "Please stop! The president is coming!"


Yeah, yeah, I think. We've been hearing all weekend, "el presidente esta aqui! el presidente esta aqui!" When I told Ramone, our tubing guide, "Digale hola para mi (tell him hi for me)," he just rolled his eyes. But, out of courtesy for a direct request, Brianna and I stopped and watched as a small motorcade of modest SUVs rolled on up.


A small, silver Toyota SUV came to a stop where we were standing and the man in the front seat got out, dressed casually in jeans and a white polo with an Ecuadorian insignia over the right breast. He must be on the staff of the president, I thought. I wonder which car he's actually in. 
He shook a couple hands and quickly got back in the car, and before it started moving again, I turned in doubt to a woman behind me to ask, "Perdon, who is that man?"


She looked at me with wide eyes and an astonished smile. "El presidente de la Republica!"


"OH!" I exclaimed. I'd - I've - I've researched his schooling, his politics, his history in leadership in Ecuador - but his picture?


The woman caught my mistake and stepped forward to pull on the arm of the man who had originally stopped us - her husband, an oil syndicate leader who had some level of personal connection with the president. The man, Fausto, turned to the man in the front seat and rapidly exchanged the message that we would like to meet him. The car stopped, two feet forward, and president Rafael Correa stepped out of the car to shake hands with Brianna and I and ask us where we were from, and what we were doing in Ecuador. In an odd mix of Spanish and English we questioned-and-answered our way to telling him we were teaching English in Quito. About this time, by the crowd gathering, it suddenly dawned on me that I was talking to the president of Ecuador in the dusty streets of Mindo, looking him in the eye and telling him what I was doing in his country as though I was still the center of the world. Panicked that my Spanish didn't reach a level of formality suitable for a president, I was suddenly unsure of how to continue - which was just as well, because having monopolized three minutes of Correa's life, we were nearly out of time. 
"A picture!" Exclaimed Brianna, and the woman, Janice, who had correctly identified Correa for me snapped a couple. 
"Excuse me," said the president as he put his arms around us. "I'm all wet from tubing."
"Oh...that's ok." Smile!
We then took a couple of photos for Fausto and Janice with Correa. He shook a few more hands and took a few more photos by request from the crowd in the street. As he got in the car, waving goodbye, we locked eyes and he smiled.
"Muchas gracias," I repeated, though not sure how audibly, waving my little happy hand away.
In still a state of shock, Brianna and I were assaulted kindly by Fausto and Janice to please send them the photos...the exchange of information led to a conversation, which led to us back on the road in search of Ecuador's best coffee, which led to an upstairs coffee parlor where we sequestered ourselves for half an hour from a brief but torrential rain to talk about Fausto and Janice's home in Cumbaya, the valley near Quito, and their son who would soon be going on an extended stay to the US...

Janice, Fausto, and Rafael Correa (center)

upstairs, with some damn good coffee

well, they left the guitar lying around!

two immensely satisfied girls

All in all, we left the cloud forest...on a cloud.

On the bus ride home, the bus was crowded as usual, and as Brianna and I chatted excitedly on-and-off about our day, Brianna couldn't help but continue to notice a woman who had picked up her sleeping two- or three-year-old and was attempting to hold her for an extended period of time while standing in the aisle. 

"Quieres poner su hija aqui?" I heard from behind closed eyes.

Brianna had offered the woman to put her child on our laps, and she easily accepted. With Brianna cradling the girl's sleeping head and myself hugging her legs, we all continued on with our nap. The woman, exhausted and relieved, lowered herself to a seat on the aisle floor. Music overhead began to play the 90's classic, what if God was one of us...just a stranger on the bus...trying to make his way home...and I was overwhelmed by the culture of Ecuador, and the nature of God in this life.

To have been so incredibly blessed in one day, in a way so unavoidably obvious. I had been dead-set on coffee, and as I trudged down the dirt road in Mindo in disappointment, a president was instead planted in my path. The sleeping child on my lap in the bus filled me with a sense of a culture of family and shared familial love; that it was okay for the woman to accept the help of two gringas and allow her daughter to be cared for by them while she took some much-needed rest, without requiring any further explanation. There was trust. There was a community of help. There was immense peace. This would never happen in America.

Ecuador had truly hit me.

Later, after arriving back at el terminal norte, Brianna and I were shocked to be suddenly separated by the obstinate bus doors as too many passengers tried to squeeze on to the bus heading back up la avenida america. 

"No!" I exclaimed from inside the bus, holding one hand up to the glass doors, wondering if I could push them to re-open and access my friend who still stood on the terminal sidewalk, staring in. She looked at me and shrugged, and that was all we had time for. The bus moved forward, and I looked around, strategizing, wondering if Brianna would be okay and how I could make sure she got home safe.

I looked up back into the bus and saw the same woman with her child, a cell phone to one ear, waving at me to come, come. I glanced back towards the terminal and Brianna, then back at her. She motioned insistently, pointing to her seat. Lacking any other plan of action, I moved toward her. She put her daughter on her lap and patted the seat next to her, a rare prize on an overcrowded bus.

"Muchas gracias," I said.

Terminating her phone call, she asked, "Y su amiga?"

"Ay!" I sighed. "Las puertas...(the doors...)"

"Ah, si. Espera a la proxima parada." Wait for her at the next stop.

Mmhmm, I smiled. I had felt so at peace earlier, loving this woman's child for a bus ride. Now I was being taken care of by her, and it felt right, and the whole thing felt right, even on the bus without my partner and unsure of how to navigate myself home.

Brianna and I did end up reuniting at the correct stop, which we both made it to, only about ten or fifteen minutes apart. As I waited in the darkening stop at her intersection, pepper spray in hand, I had a rowdy group of English backpackers lighting up the station with their accented words, and I wasn't afraid.

I walked Brianna home that night and we each went off to our TESOL responsibilities: I to plan a lesson that would fail on my students uncomfortably hard the next night, giving me a true mistake-learning experience.

But more, as you know, about that later. :)