We woke up early on Sunday to get a jump on our all-day bus adventure (and to have a handy excuse for skipping that week’s culto).
Mimi and Quinn spent no fewer than 30 minutes saying goodbye to Jose and Matilde, their Kitchwa grandparents that week. They were such lovely hosts.
To that point, Jose offered to drive us to the bus station when it didn’t look like there’d be any taxis coming by. On our drive, I asked Jose how long he had been running the hostel. He told me that he started building it in 1975. And that’s not like when I say we are renovating our home when I really mean we’re hiring people who know what they’re doing to renovate our home. Jose himself was the one swinging the hammer back then.
His original intention was to use the massive estate as a home for all of his extended family. But like most construction projects down here, it advanced in fits and starts. When he earned some money, he bought some brinks. No money, no bricks. So by the time he completed the house 30 years later in 2005, his children had moved out to start their own families and his parents had passed away. (At that point in his story, I had to explain away my watery eyes as a sudden-onset banana allergy.) So he instead decided to open his home up to travelers. He’s been running the hostel ever since.
When we pulled up to the bus terminal, Jose pointed out the busses heading to Quito and sent us on our way with hugs and well wishes as if he were dropping off his own family. But as Jose pulled away to return to the hostel, our vibe suddenly switched from warm and fuzzy to sharp and observant. After all, we were in a busy South American bus terminal about to traverse over the Andes with two small children. We needed to bring our A game. I didn’t make things easier for ourselves by sending more suitcases than suitcase contents back with Alicia. So about a third of our possessions were stuffed into a couple of shopping bags and our dirty clothes sack. We were getting the full experience.
No more than 90% sure we were getting on the right bus, we loaded two of our bags (the two we could most live without) in the underside luggage compartment. The rest we carried with us to our seats. Once we were good and tucked in (and heard the driver yell out, “Last call, Quito!”), I realized that neither of our children had gone to the bathroom even once since waking up. This was not going to end well. There are no bathrooms on these busses, and every South American bus driver I had ever encountered would sooner leave you on the side of the road than risk being late because of a bathroom break.
So I took one child under each arm and gave my best overwhelmed dad face to the driver while asking if they had time to go to the bathroom. “Bien rápido. Un minutito,” which loosely translates to, “If they have to poop, say goodbye to your bags and look for the next bus in an hour.”
I took him at his word and sprinted to the restroom with our kids. A wave of relief came over me when I felt enough small change in my pocket to pay the $0.15 fee to the attendant sitting outside of this and every other public bathroom we had encountered in the country ($0.20 if you want toilet paper). Although in all honesty, I would have gladly given her the $20 in my wallet.
Reminding my children through the open bathroom doors that we had to keep it quick, I nervously split my attention between them and the bus door. Still open. For now.
Mercifully, neither kid had a #2 sneak out on them, and we hopped back on the bus just as it was starting to roll away. Aimee had the hand sanitizer ready to go (no time to wash hands), and we patted ourselves on the back for successfully pulling off one of the more critical potty breaks of our parenting career.
The bus ride itself was delightful. We had long since discovered the time-warping power of audiobooks. So while Mimi and Quinn listened to the tales of magical forest creatures and trucks, respectively, Aimee and I marveled over the scenery and fell dead asleep, respectively.
I eventually woke up to the calls of “Cafe! Cafe!” from the hop-on, hop-off food vendors that these bus routes are known for. As nice as a coffee sounded, I couldn’t get my act together fast enough to fish a few coins out of my pocket. And if I’m honest, I didn’t want to be the next victim of questionable food choices. That hadn’t ever stopped me before (and how risky is boiled water and coffee grounds?), but when iron-stomached Aimee goes down, no one is safe.
We rolled up to the Northeast Quito bus terminal around lunchtime. Nearly every bus route in the northern half of Ecuador starts or ends in the city. But it’s a big city. So we needed to catch a cab across town to meet our bus for the second half of the journey. We saw a line of reputable-looking taxis waiting at the terminal when we got off the first bus, and I was feeling ready to give the Quito’s taxis another shot. And I’m glad I did. The driver was friendly, the pre-negotiated price was fair, and at least 50% of us had seatbelts available. Checked all the boxes.
We rolled up to the other bus terminal about 15 minutes later, and found the sign for the bus cooperative that runs to Mindo, our destination for the next few days.
I’m now realizing that I haven’t talked much about the cooperative system. Every neighborhood we visited throughout our trip, no matter how small, always had at least three pillars of the community: a financial cooperative, a transportation cooperative, and a small army of street-side produce vendors.
It’s pretty evident that all three of them feed off each other. The financial cooperatives function as micro-credit agencies that lend to the farmers, who bring their crops to town in the back of a pickup or bus from the transportation cooperatives. The cooperatives seem to be the product of government policy, foreign non-profit seed money, and grassroots ingenuity. I’m far from qualified to say with any certainty that the system works well. But it sure seems like it does. I see indigenous farmers walking into the financial cooperatives every morning to make a deposit and the 25 year old cooperativa drivers have meticulously maintained trucks that wouldn’t look out of place in the parking lot at an Arizona trailhead. Plus, I always know with absolute certainly that I’m never more than a half block away from a dozen mandarin oranges for a dollar. What’s not to love?
Where were we? Cooperatives. Bus terminal. That’s right. We knew the Flor del Valle cooperative ran busses to Mindo, but we didn’t have any idea about the schedule. I thought the busses ran every hour, but my information was outdated (as was often always the case in this post-COVID travel environment). After we watched several non-Mindo busses come and go from the Flor del Valle parking spot, Aimee talked with one of the cooperative employees who told her that there were only three Mindo-bound busses running each day. Oh boy.
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| I call this one “Surviving a 2 hour layover at a remote South American bus terminal on a hot afternoon with small children, too many bags, and not enough food.” |
But we made it with our wits intact. The room temperature chocolate milk bottles and semi-stale cinnamon rolls from the bus terminal’s newsstand made a passable lunch for the kids. Aimee and I powered through on the miscellaneous nuts and energy bars we managed to scrounge from the bottoms of our backpacks. We’re on vacation. This is fun. We chose this.
