Mindo, My Sweetheart

Cascada Nambillo

Me, jumping

On Sunday night I sat at a small picnic table in a rustic plaza eating fried tilapia and watching children play in the street. While the oldest girl hit the younger boys with a long stick, the smallest boy picked up a large rock and tried to pulverize his friends. Everyone scattered wildly and then put the rock back in the infant's hands and kept playing. As a child, my mother never let us throw rocks at each other, at least not while she was looking, and for a moment, I wanted to be a child in Ecuador, not just Ecuador, but Mindo, the small community tucked into the cleavage of Paccha Mama´s (Quechua for Mother Earth) Andean cloud rainforest, where I was staying.

On this trip, I was learning that there is a balance between persistence and submitting to the signs presented, that for any traveler a mixture of circumstance and choice dictates every destination, and it is up to that traveler to decide on the proportions of each, and to swallow the product with cheer.

I had left that morning expecting to volunteer at the Mindo Cloud Forest Foundation and was dropped off by a dirt road in Milpe, a town so small that even its neighbors hadn´t heard of it. There was only a young boy at the foundation to receive me, so as I waited for the expected family to return, I explored the woods, and never have I walked the trails of a forest so bustling with life. I heard the likes of high-frequency power drills, low bull-horns, strong mechanical hummings, all backed up by prettier alto-soloist notes twittering above, but these sounds did not belong to tools or machines, but birds. The cloud forests possess awesome color, rich gradients of greens and intermittent flourishes of brilliance in the forms of purple orchids adorned with pink leaves, tropical hummingbirds, and other flora and colors inexpressible in any medium except by the image itself. Glimpses of distant ranges were sluiced by clouds, offering an illusion of floating mountain tops. I found a waterfall, washed my face in it and returned to find the foundation´s lodges empty. The dormitories were hot, full of insects, and the only company was the birds, so I read the signs, and I left to sleep in neighboring Mindo for the night. But while eating my fried fish and watching the blue clouds roll over the jungle town, the children playing in the street, I decided I would not persist to retun to Milpe, but instead stay at exactly where I was.

The community of Mindo contains about 3,000 people, most of them living off dirt roads scattered in the jungle. There is only one central street, a few hundred feet long, and four policemen, one or two on duty at a time, although they are mostly unnecessary, since there is no crime. It is supposed to be a tourist town, and the community has economically thrived on offering ziplining, tubing, waterfall climbing, and other activities similar to other tourist mountain towns in Ecuador, but on a Monday afternoon, I counted more chickens on the streets than tourists.

On Monday I discovered that not only did I not have money, but the town´s only ATM did not accept my card. At the time, I disregareded the possible augury, and instead decided on persistence, and over the next seven hours I took several buses and trucks in search of a working ATM, before finally returning to Quito for fifteen minutes to get some cash. I returned that night confident I had chosen the right mixture, especially as I bumped into a wonderful group of people from Uruguay, Ecuador, Germany, and providentially, my hometown Richmond, Virginia and neighboring Charlottesville. That week we tubed through river rapids and ziplined over jungle canyons (a very strange way to examine a forest, especially when upside down), which was only scary because children strap you into the zipline and sometimes forget to lock the beaners on your harness, but in Ecuador everything is as relatively dangerous as it is relatively safe, so you just have to trust the people and watch other people go first. (I don´t mean to worry anybody, I only mean to say that safety is relative, especially with extreme outdoor activities).

On Wednesday several of us had various ailments so we skipped the adrenaline-hungry activity of the day and visited the public health clinic instead. I had thirty or forty itcing, bubbly bug bites I had accrued in the small mountain rural town of Lumbisi a few days earlier, from playing in a dirty river and hanging out in the gardens (no more shorts for me). The doctor looked at me legs worriedly, and said I had an infection, but that nothing was living inside. I took my prescriptions to the pharmacy and nursed my health for the day.

On Thursday a storm had knocked out the power in town, and so I sat at a sidewalk café drinking beer and watching the rain form small tributaries in the crooked stones of the main street. I had come to know several locals in town, and the night before I lightly kissed a local girl on a bridge over the river. I was comfortable there, and while watching the rain fall, I realized I could probably stay in Mindo forever. If I had to characterize the few places I have been so far in Ecuador, I would say that Quito is a petty thug, Baños a friendly badass, and Mindo, my sweetheart. And like any guy with commitment issues, I thought maybe I should leave her early, before I grew too fond. I went back to my room, and I considered the rain, the infections on my legs, smelled the strange funk of my wet clothes by my bed—I considered that maybe kissing the locals was a bad idea, and not very sustainable—I read the signs, retired my persisitence, and I packed my bags to leave the next day.

Before leaving, though, I wanted to see Mindo´s cascadas (waterfalls), and so early the next morning I took a truck and then a tarrabita (like a gondola) across the valley. On the tarrabita, a young teenager hung off the back, unafraid of the 100 meter (or more) drop below. Children are always hanging off the back of moving things in Ecuador, and it´s usually their parents driving.
I saw six waterfalls that day, but even waterfalls lose their novelty after awhile. While playing in the fifth one, I realized how much more fun it would be have someone else to play with. There are benefits and drawbacks to traveling alone. I threw a few rocks around, got bored, and left. But the sixth waterfall redeemed everything. In the river before the final waterfall, there was a shaky wooden ladder supported by two vertical pipes and I climbed up, but noone was there. But I did not give up. I waited and climbed up again later when I saw a group of people, and someone let me in at the iron door at the top. Cascada Nambillo is not tall but moderately violent and its rapids rush impressively through the shallow canyon below. On a ledge before the falls there is a white strip of carpet and a guide with a rope and harness, waiting for anyone willing to jump. As always I asked, “Es seguro?” (is it safe?) and as always, he answered, “Claro” (sure). I asked again. He threw some grass down into the rapids, 40 feet below and pointed—that was where I needed to jump. There are few things more fun in Ecuador than jumping off tall things, and this was no different. I jumped, swallowed my stomach, and was in turn swallowed by the rapids. The water was resplendently cold, and the rapids strong enough that I needed a few tugs from my friend above to get out. I climbed back up, jumped again, then I gathered my things and left the forest, saying goodbye to the friends I had made that week on the main street before getting back on the bus to Quito, dirty, wet, and content.