Back home, kind of

Wednesday was our last day in Mindo. It was a delightful little jungle escape, but the limited bus schedule didn’t inspire a lot of dawdling. But now we had dialed in our breakfast(s) routine. First stop was the neighborhood panederia to grab some fresh rolls for first breakfast and fuel our walk to the tourist cafe for coffee and juice. Then off to that week’s grandma’s house for some steaming hot humitas. It was the kind of morning that could almost make you forget that you had to step over a literal river of fire ants to get to your hostel room the night before. Almost.

Then it was off to the bus stop. The actual stop, not just some random intersection in the middle of town where we semi-accidentally hopped off at the day we arrived. We were seasoned pros at this point. There were already a handful of people waiting around, so we knew we were in the right place. It was a profoundly stereotypical South American bus stop. A single fan in the corner completely outmatched by the already-oppressive 8 am heat? Check. Four unshowered 20-somethings that we overlapped with at the colibri house? Check. A ticket agent who “forgot” to give me back one of our passports after we paid? Check. An Australian talking about his journey up from Argentina? Check. A few unplaceable Central European accents wafting through the room? Check. An older local couple with suitcases full of produce? Check. I couldn’t have invented a more quintessential scene if I tried. I said we were doing the bus trip for our kids, but that’s only a small part of it. I love this stuff.

We learned our lesson from the departure trip and took the kids to the bathroom with entire minutes to spare before the bus left. So we had a much less frenzied time getting settled this time around. The kids took positions to maximize their sightseeing while Aimee and I tucked our valuables underneath us in preparation for our eventual naps.

It was a lovely departure from a charming little town. And to top it all off, I was touched and honored when Grandma Humita saw us on the bus out of town and waved us off like we were her own family.

The bus trip back was painless. We listened to the hostel crowd swap stories about their previous stops with an air of oneupmanship. It took everything I had not to point out to them that the real challenge wasn’t backpacking across South America, it was doing everything they mentioned with an 8 year old that is physically incapable of not petting every street dog she comes across, and a 5 year old that rates statues by how fun they are to jump off. That’s real adventure travel.

We didn’t even have a layover—the only real challenge of the trip out to Mindo—since Quito was our final destination for that day. We were spending the night at Alicia and Isaias’ place to sneak in some more time with them and get an early jump on our flight the next morning (not home, more on that in a minute).

The afternoon was delightful. All four kids played out on the porch while the rest of us caught up on our trip to Mindo and Alicia’s upcoming next embassy selection. Even though she had been at the Quito embassy for less than a year, the Foreign Service assignments are planned out far enough in advance that it was already time for her to rank her preferences. We obviously voted heavily in favor of places we’d like to visit her at, but there was far more for her to consider. A cool site might not have any nearby schools. A place with great schools might have less interesting work. Did she want to work for a career ambassador with more experience or an appointed ambassador with close connections to the president? So much more to think about than what the food situation is.

So we enjoyed living vicariously through her and ranking in our own minds the virtues of Bogota, Mexico City, Buenos Aires and a handful of other Latin American capitols. We didn’t envy how agonizing that decision would be. And at the end of the day, it was only a preference ranking. There would still be a very real chance that she’d be assigned to Nuevo Laredo on the border with Texas because the person doing Alicia’s job there right now learns about a sick family member back home and puts in her notice the morning Alicia’s name comes up for assignment. It’s a very tenuous process and a frequent stress point for many Foreign Service officers.

But thoughts of their future home quickly melted away into memories of their previous home when one of Alicia’s friends from the embassy dropped by. He had overlapped with Aimee and Alicia in Nicaragua when the three of them were in the Peace Corps, and their stories from then were further encouraged by Isaias cooking up an incredible dinner of Nicaraguan classics. It was beyond delicious.

We had barely been in Ecuador for a few weeks, but something about a fantastic meal with good friends made Quito really start to feel like home. But we didn’t have time to get sentimental. At the crack of dawn the next morning, we’d be setting off for the Galápagos Islands. Yep. The time had come. The land of tortoises, blue footed boobies, and that bizarre murder documentary Alicia showed us the first night we arrived. Pretty exciting stuff. 

Buenas noches.

Humitas, colibris, and ants. So. Many. Ants.

We all woke up on Tuesday slightly hungover from the three huge pieces of cake we ate in bed while staying up late and watching a movie. Short of bumping into Taylor Swift at the panederia, I don’t know if Mimi could have had a more perfect birthday evening. Thankfully the day turned around pretty nicely once we got some food in our bellies.

But that was yesterday. Today is about us finding a good cup of coffee. We needed it. So we set off towards the two sleepy blocks that made up Mindo’s downtown. Nothing opens before 9 am in Ecuador, except occasionally the most touristy of cafes. And I’m trying very hard to not fall into the “dad on a family vacation” stereotype, but it’s getting harder and harder to justify a sad attempt at American breakfast for three times the price of everything else here. So we asked ourselves what the locals did for breakfast. Most of them ate at home, I’m sure, but surely not everyone. 

As we were sipping our coffees (or juices for our intrinsically caffeinated children), an older woman walked into the cafe and answered the local breakfast question for us. She exchanged some friendly words with the barista, and handed him what looked like a couple of tamales in exchange for a few small coins. She had our attention.

We had seen humitas on a few menus over the past week, but hadn’t tried any yet. In fact, we didn’t even know what they were until we heard the woman use the term when she sold the barista his breakfast. Now we could think of nothing else. So we paid our bill and set off on a hunt to find some of our own.
We walked past the central taxi stand for what was probably the 100th time since we got to Mindo. By now the drivers recognized us and knew we were “walkers.” So we all exchanged a round of buenos diases and other pleasantries, but I did have a question for them that day. These guys know the town inside and out, so I’m sure they could point us towards some humitas. One driver looked to another, thought for a minute, and said, “Oh yeah! The lady! Just down the street past the pharmacy.” Success! And the directions were even in reference to a structure that’s still in existence! A rare treat for the South American tourist. The day was looking up already.

So we walked another couple of blocks, and found the pharmacy they were talking about. Very promising. Then we even found a handmade humitas sign. Even more promising! But I couldn’t find anybody by the stand, and the table underneath it was empty and wiped clean. Ah! We missed her! But as I was commiserating with Aimee (both of us now quite hungry without the 2,000 calories of fresh blackberry juice surging through our veins like our children had), we heard a soft voice coming from nearby. “Hola. Quieren comer?” We elatedly called back in Spanish, “Yes! We’d love to eat!” We found the person that the voice belonged to as we looked up just above the sign. It was an elderly woman shucking corn on a second floor porch. “That’s her!” Aimee stage whispered to me. I took a look and immediately realized the same thing. It was the same person that sold our barista his breakfast (and unwittingly cost him a $20 pancake sale). We told her that we had seen her walking around earlier that morning, and how happy we were to be able to try her food ourselves.

The food was absolutely incredible (and collectively cost less than just one of our coffees from earlier that day), but the woman herself was just as much of a reason to eat in her tiny little shop. She was a super charming grandma that had been living in Mindo for 40 years. She recounted some of the town’s history for us as she cooked our humitas in what was clearly her personal apartment kitchen just next to where we were sitting. Even using the term restaurant paints an overly formal picture of the place. We sat on a 6 inch bench under an equally tiny countertop with nothing on it besides a communal salt shaker and chili dish.

We spent much of the morning there, watching a few locals come and go to get their own bags of humitas. Our kids entertained themselves with the hand crank mill our host used to grind the corn kernels she was shucking the whole time we were there. There was no menu, which only further reinforced what Aimee and I had long since discovered in places like this. There’s really no better food option than finding the place that serves just the one thing. When their very existence depends on a single item, the chefs don’t mess around. This was no exception. There were only humitas, but when you were there, you didn’t want anything but humitas.

I was just rooting around in my photos, a little bummed that I didn’t take a photo of the outside of the restaurant. It was such a core part of our Mindo experience. But then I found that I actually did! It was just by accident. It’s the elevated patio in the left of the photo, above the grill next to the green cross from the pharmacy.

This wouldn’t have normally been a photo worth sharing. I just snapped it for my “Kids getting along nicely and walking down a foreign city street” series. I have to stock up on them so that I can have something to look at while recovering from the “Kids losing their mind because we should have eaten ten minutes ago” series, which lives next to the only recently-retired “I knew we should have gone back to the hotel for a nap” series in our travel photo album.

Gosh. Where were we? I can’t believe it took me this long just to get through the breakfast stories. This wasn’t even the story I was planning on telling you today. That would be the colibri story. That’s what I sat down to write about.

Colibri is Spanish for hummingbird. And Mindo is awash in them. The lush sky-island rain forest seems to be an ideal climate for them, because they’re as ubiquitous throughout the city as pigeons would be in any other. And a few enterprising families have set up little amateur nature preserves. We were all about it. So on Alicia’s tip, we went out looking for one that she and her family had gone to during their trip to the city. She sent us the name of the place* and told us it was walkable. The town was essentially one long street, so the colibri preserve couldn’t be too hard to find. I did a quick search on the map and set off down the road to find it.

And kept walking. And kept walking. The road turned to dirt, but I was convinced (in classic dad fashion) that it was, “just a little bit further.” 

It was most decidedly not. What I had found on the map was an AirBNB rental with the name of “Colibri Cottage.” Whoops.

These are their, “Did Dad just walked us two miles in the wrong direction?” faces.

But they were good sports. It didn’t hurt that everyone was very well fed at that point. So we walked the two miles back to town, and then the two miles back out of town in the opposite direction to where the actual colibri house was located.

*Aimee later reminded me that Alicia had actually sent the exact location. I just didn’t notice that. Not doing great at avoiding the “dad on vacation” tropes right now.

We did eventually find the place. And it was adorable. The daughter of the family running it (no older than Quinn) placed a little bottle cap in each of our hands and filled them with sugar water. Then she stood back as a dozen neighborhood hummingbirds flew up to us for a snack. We took no fewer than a bazillion photos. Here are three of them.

As you can see from the smile above, Quinn had a much easier time getting the hummingbirds to land on him than he did with the butterflies. Maybe too easy. Quinn even fed the wasps. I think he was just happy to be in on the action this time around.

That experience alone would have been worth the small entrance fee. And in retrospect, maybe we should have just kept it at that. But the family had also built a little lookout tower that was definitely not up to code. Even by local standards.

As you’ll notice, I have no photos from the top. It was not built for people my size. As soon as I stepped on the first rung, you could hear it groaning at having to carry my 220 lbs. Aimee, being lighter (and braver) than I am, went up with Quinn while somehow Mimi playing cliffside pole vaulter by the storage shed was the safer of two options.

Aimee and Quinn made it down safely, although Aimee can’t look at a bamboo pole anymore without breaking into a cold sweat.

The adventure continued from there. The hosts built a trail system through what can only be described as their massive back yard.

I’m pretty sure Quinn was trying to karate kick through a cobweb in that photo. Better him than me. 

There were no maps or trail signs, so we just wandered aimlessly for the next thirty minutes. That led to us finding ourselves in someone else’s yard, getting chased out by their dogs. On more than one occasion.

At one point, we popped into a clearing to find a much better constructed lookout tower. Perpetually feeling like we were walking somewhere we shouldn’t be that afternoon, I wasn’t sure if it was part of the park we were exploring. But whether or not it was, the guide at the top saw us standing there awkwardly and beckoned us up. Sure. Why not?

We found an older couple from Quito at the top of the tower. They had advanced-looking camera equipment and seemed to be pretty serious birders. The guide that called us up was talking to them about some of the local wildlife and had a pretty amazing bird call. Actually several. He could mimic several of the tropical birds we saw flying around up there. 

At one point, the guide whispered to us, “Look over there! I’m trying to call over a toucan!”

I had one of those killing-it-at-being-a-dad feelings when I turned to Mimi and said, “Wow! A toucan! We’re going to see a toucan!” Without missing a beat, she deadpanned back to me, “I’ve seen one. With uncle Jason. In Belize.”

For fuck’s sake.

I discovered in that moment that it’s possible to feel like a wonderful parent and a terrible parent at the exact same time.

That’s not true. I won’t pretend that’s the first time I’ve ever felt that. Maybe it was the first time that day, but just as likely, probably not.

But at least our 5 year old can still be impressed.

We eventually climbed down from the tower and made our way back to the loose trail system. But still lost and confused (geographically and emotionally), I did a so-so job getting us back to the house we started our tour at. A few more wrong yards and a few more tropical jungle cobwebs later, we made it back out to the main road and worked our way back into town. That was actually when the “kids getting along” photo up top was taken. That’s parenthood. I’m trying to wrestle with existential questions like whether it’s possible to show a kid too much of the world, while meanwhile that same kid is skipping down the street right in front of me. 

I’m sure there’s a lesson there, but I didn’t have time to figure it out. As soon as we made our way back to the hostel, the staff ran up to us and asked us not to go into our room. There was a massive fire ant infestation they were in the process of cleaning out.

My first thought was, “I hope this isn’t because we ate cake in the room last night.” But before I had an opportunity to surreptitiously ask where the infestation started, the staff told us it had affected the entire premise. Phew. Not us. So then my second thought was, “We had fire ants all the time in Whiteriver. They’re not that bad.” But then I saw them. What could only be described as a river of ants surging along the path in front of our room.

Yep. Ok. You’re right. It’s bad.

And this was after they had spent the day clearing out most of them. 

Every now and then, I dream about moving my family to some remote tropical paradise and setting up shop as the town doc. This was not one of those moments.

Behind the curtain at a butterfly garden

I was planning on ending the blogging for the day with us finishing up our ice cream and getting ready for bed. In fact, I was planning on ending the actual day with us finishing up our ice cream and getting ready for bed. But just as my eyes were starting to close, we heard some movement outside our door. But I’ll skip the suspense. We weren’t in any danger. At least not any physical danger. But my self-image took a mortal blow as I gradually came to terms over the next hour that I was no longer the person staying up late talking on the hostel porch all night, I was the person that popped my head out of the door and told them to be quiet. I don’t want to say that it would be better if they were just stealing the shoes we left on the front porch, but at least it would be emotionally cleaner.

But I didn’t spend much time processing that transition. I was exhausted, and reconciling an ego takes too much energy. That’s one of the things you learn on this side of the hostel door.

I did eventually fall asleep, which was good, because the next day was Mimi’s birthday. And she wasn’t going to waste a minute of it sleeping in. So well before most of the town was up, we set off in search of some good coffee for Aimee and I, and something covered in sugar for the kids. I was starting to tire of paying $10 for a Nutella waffle when the locals were eating regional fare for a third of that. But it wasn’t my birthday.

After breakfast, we made our way back to the hostel and took the opportunity to explore its pretty expansive grounds. It was so, so nice that the kids are now old enough (Mimi turned 8 today!) that we can just let them explore on their own a bit. It’s not that we don’t worry, but I can now go about 15 minutes before I start wondering where they are. So after about 30 minutes of not hearing any giggles (or the occasional argument) coming from the forest, I figured I should probably go lay eyes on them. I definitely had to talk myself down a bit when I saw 4 empty shoes by the side of the river. But just a bit further down we found their previous occupants. Our kids had stumbled upon a little hammock cabana that inexplicably wasn’t the first thing hostel staff showed us when we checked in. It was an idyllic thatch roof hut alongside the river with a half-dozen woven hammocks tied between the poles. Nice find, kids. But maybe next time, give us a heads up.

As much as I would have loved to spend the rest of the day there, we had a special excursion in mind for Mimi’s birthday. One of my favorite memories from when Aimee was pregnant with Mimi was visiting the Monarch butterfly sanctuary near Mexico City. That was when I really started to internalize that I’d be a dad, and I’ve associated butterflies with Mimi ever since. So when Aimee discovered that Mindo also had a butterfly sanctuary, it was an obvious choice for Mimi's birthday.

The sanctuary in Mindo was a family run operation far smaller than the one in Mexico City, but not lacking in charm. It even had a little cafe that we figured we’d have lunch in afterwards. So we hopped in a cab for the 10 minute ride to the outskirts of town.

After paying the entrance fee, we were shown a remarkably well done video about the butterfly lifecycle and how to interact with them in the sanctuary. The most important warning was that butterflies sense nutrients with their feet. So they’re often on the ground as they explore the environment around them. My kids are not known for their cautious and gentle frolicking, so I made a mental note to hold their hands when we walked in to prevent a massacre.

But after the initial excitement, they remained remarkably composed. We definitely brought some bigger kids on this trip. And of course it didn’t hurt that the kids quickly figured out if they stayed still long enough, it wouldn’t be long before a butterfly landed on their face.

Ok, now that we've got the social media version of those photos out of the way, I can tell you that they were among the hardest adorable-children-doing-precious-thing photos we’ve ever taken. First, Quinn, slathered in bug spray (malaria and Leishmaniasis are very real threats in Mindo), couldn’t get a butterfly to come within 20 feet of him for the first hour we were there. It was soul crushing to watch as he went up to a hundred butterflies, only to have 99 of them fly away. The 100th was already dead. Then as Mimi, slower moving and apparently less repelented, started to figure out how to get the massive insects to land on her, Quinn wiped the tears from his eyes and quietly sulked, “Why don’t they like me?”

It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. I had a hard time not feeling like the worst parent ever. How could I be so cruel to torture this child by bringing him to a protected butterfly sanctuary in a tropical sky island in South America? Monster.

Once we finally got one to land on Quinn (with a little coaching from Aimee), I took so many photos my phone melted.

With Quinn now content, I thought this parenting thing would be smooth sailing for the rest of the day. Nope. By this point, it was now 12:30, and we hadn’t eaten anything since 8:30. That’s three and a half hours too many for this family. Almost to the minute from when a butterfly "landed" on Quinn's nose, Mimi just sat down in the middle of the path and started silently sobbing. I forgot what the stated reason was. But the real reason was because she was famished, and cursed with some very potent hangry genes from both of her parents. I was equally hungry, and only slightly more in control of my emotions, but I was able to get her to at least stand up. Quinn took over from there. In the way only little brothers can, he got Mimi to forget her worries and run with him through the forest. The only problem was that this “forest” was effectively a screened-in patio. So as Quinn was running full sprint through the plastic strip door that divided the preserve from the actual forest around it, he absolutely clocked the metal pole in the middle that holds the real doors closed at night.

It’s ok. You can laugh. Mimi did.

The only thing going through my mind at that point (aside from wondering how much I needed to worry about Quinn's concussion) was that we needed to leave right now. Fun’s fun.

Our original plan to eat at the cafe in the preserve was immediately aborted when I saw the outrageous prices (even by US standards) for some sad-looking food that clearly was only fed to tourists without other options. Yes, we were four of those tourists without other options, but I was in no mood to participate in a fleecing. So Aimee asked the preserve staff to call us a taxi while I took the children outside and tried to keep them from falling to pieces during the 15 minutes it would take our ride to get there. It was not easy.

But our taxi did eventually show up, for a second time. (The first time was to pick up people who called him 10 minutes earlier. That was an awkward conversation from the back seat.) Embracing our vulnerability, we asked the driver to just drop us off anywhere he recommended we eat lunch. In most other places, that would have been a recipe to get dropped off at a grossly overpriced tourist trap that gave the driver a cut of our bill (or worse). But the drivers in Mindo were delightful, so knew we’d be fine. And we were. The driver dropped us off at a place that was definitely on our preferred end of the restaurant spectrum. An exceedingly local spot with an easily missed sign and no menu to speak of. There was only “the meal” they were serving that day. Take it or leave it. We took it, of course.

We spent the rest of the afternoon swinging in the hammocks of our new favorite hang out spot on the hostel grounds. Mimi read the book she got for her birthday while I questioned every parenting decision I had made over the past 12 hours. I think we still have some time before the kids start making persistent memories, right? I’ll just show her this photo in a few years and tell her the entire day was perfect.

Happy birthday, Mimi. Thanks for the adventure.

Beer and ice cream

The rest of our bus ride was uneventful, and not only because I managed to sleep through the second leg of our journey as well. (I’m now remembering how poorly I slept the night before because of the music that inexplicably blasted from some unknown loudspeaker in downtown Otavalo until well after midnight.)

But from what I did manage to see through the occassional cracked eyelid was stunning. We were descending from the 9,000 foot volcanic foothills of Quito to the lush, mountainous cloud forests along the western slopes of the Andes. At 4,500 feet elevation, the area would still qualify as high elevation in most other countries, but was markedly different than anything we had seen in Ecuador so far.

We seemed to be nearing the end of our journey around 3 pm. The bus conductor hopped off the bus for a quick minute as we passed through the cute little Main Street of what my cell phone map told me was Mindo (there was no announcement). Most of the people still on the bus at that point were clearly tourists. None of us knew what we were doing. While some people were getting off, several others were staying on. I didn’t think the bus went to any other cities after Mindo, but it’s not like these bus lines are know for their clarity or ease. Nearly everyone who takes the busses grew up riding them, and it’s obvious from the fare payment (the conductor just comes through with a basket, and everyone tosses in what they already know to be the price) to the departure times (when the driver says so) that these routes aren’t the main way visitors got from town to town. We took pride in choosing the more adventurous route (and in the saving of $150 over another private car ride), but also wanted to make sure we made it to our hostel that night. So I  decided to take my chances at what seemed to be the bus stop for Mindo. We quickly gathered our belongings, and we hopped off the bus with the few other tourists who clearly didn’t know what they were doing, either. We were barely able to convince the conductor to open the luggage compartment for us, and the driver was clearly not thrilled. He started rolling the bus forward as we were getting our bags out, and the conductor was in a full sprint by the time she hopped back on the bus. I guess that wasn’t the real stop. But we made it!

Not loving the vulnerability of lugging around more bags than people on a busy thoroughfare in a city I had never been to before, I quickly checked the map and shuffled everyone up a side street. But my caution was far more than what was necessary. After I realized that the first few people who approached us were genuinely curious about who the new visitors were (and not trying to size us up and steal our luggage), I relaxed enough to join the conversation. One person walking alongside us was visiting from Quito, another lived a block away, and they really were just saying hello. Apparently people still do that. How nice.

Our hostel ended up just being a few blocks away. It was a cute little family-run operation alongside a meandering river that ran through town. We had been spoiled by immediately becoming family with the owners of our last hostel, but the people who ran this hostel were plenty friendly in their own way. The desk clerk seemed a little frazzled when trying to find our reservation, but eventually led us to a room that would work very well. Not much in the way of a tour or introduction, but we got what we needed.

With our bus-terminal lunch leaving us wanting, our only real agenda item for that afternoon was finding a nice dinner. And boy, did we ever. On Alicia’s tip (weekend trips to Mindo are popular among the embassy staff), we found a Persian restaurant not far from where we got off the bus. Alicia told us it was easy to miss, but delicious. She was right on both accounts. It was a little 6-foot wide stall sandwiched between a basket shop and a panadería that was run by an Iranian refugee couple who somehow managed to settle in Mindo, Ecuador. What a strange and beautiful world we live in.

Aimee and I were already enthralled by the two (two!!) pages of vegetarian options. But beyond that, it was, by far, one of the most incredible meals we have ever eaten in this country or any other. Easily the best falafel I’ve ever had. And I’ve had a lot of falafel.

But, alas, the restaurant wasn’t perfect. It didn’t serve beer. And the 5,000 foot elevation drop brought a heat that we just weren’t prepared for. The kind of tropical heat that only a watered down, slightly chilled local beer can cut through. So we wandered the streets looking for a particular type of establishment that sold both beer and ice cream, and lied to our children that we were doing this for them.

I know. We’re so selfless.

Bus day!

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.

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.

How much for the alpaca?

Saturdays in Otavalo are market days. It's a scene. But since we had already been down there a few times (and didn’t need to encourage any more souvenir requests from our children), we opted to explore a few other sights around town. We would definitely be breaking our one-activity-per-day rule, but it was our last day in Otavalo and we wanted to make the most of it.

As we were getting ready to leave for the day, we were unable to find Mimi. But that was nothing new. She had become the little mayoress of Hostal Curinan, and was known to hang out in the office greeting new guests with Jose and Matilde. In fact, when we were looking for Mimi a few days earlier, I asked Jose if he had seen her. He replied matter of factly, “Mimi? She’s in the office. She’s always in the office.” And that’s exactly where we had found her this time, getting her hair braided by Matilde as the two of them chatted like schoolmates. Neither of them understanding each other’s language particularly well, nor seeming to mind. It's going to be hard to part these two when we leave tomorrow.

Our first stop was the local animal market (the same one that Lucia had tried to sell a pig at the week before). Whereas the main market is heavily geared towards tourists, the animal market was decidedly the opposite. I mean, what could a tourist possibly do with a possibly dead chicken or a very much alive alpaca?

Of course, that didn't stop Mimi from making a fairly convincing case to bring a rabbit home.

From there, we headed up (way up) to the foothills of the mountain range encircling Otavalo. The drive itself, while slightly nausea inducing, was nearly worth it on its own. It meandered through a hillside farming community and provided a stunning overlook of the nearby Lago San Pablo.

Our ultimate destination on that drive was an expansive nature preserve advertised as a Condor Park. It was, but that's selling it short. It's also a stunning cliffside overlook, a reasonably comprehensive aviary showcasing several local birds of prey, and also a window back into time. The park staff take rescued birds, large and small, and nurse them back to health as part of a traditional cultural practice with roots going back nearly 5,000 years. The birds are sent sailing over the city, always coming back. It’s completely under-sold, and was a very impressive operation.

Another family wandering around the park that day was from Eastern Oregon (originally Tanzania) with kids about the same age as ours. It was nice to chat with them a bit as our kids played together after the bird show (these kids know no strangers). Despite the parents appearing to be only a bit older than us, their work (something having to do with exotic snakes, they didn’t exactly go into detail) had allowed them to be within a year or so of retiring. They were in Ecuador that summer to scout it out as a potential destination. No one in the family spoke any Spanish yet, but they weren’t going to let that stop them. And we couldn’t blame them. There was a reason that nearly every foreigner we met in Otavalo had either retired there or was thinking about it. We were among the very few short-term visitors (although that was partly because the minimal but very visible drug violence in other parts of the country kept a lot of people away).

We swung by the main market on our way back. Quinn had his eye on a hand-carved wooden excavator he had seen a week earlier. We told him to think on it at the time, since we were going to keep non-wearable souvenirs to a minimum. He did, and to no one's surprise, he remained pretty focused on adding to his truck collection. But when we went back a few other times during the week, we hadn’t been able to find that artisan again. Quinn was sad, but surprisingly understanding for a 5 year old. So we figured we'd take another stab at it, and pass through for one last look when the market was in full swing. 

We ended up finding the artisan, but the excavator wasn’t out on his table anymore. Oh boy. Parenting. But Quinn demonstrated a reasonable amount of maturity, especially given his love for all things trucks. And in a positive reinforcement win for the ages, when the artisan heard us talking about how cool the excavator had been (as opposed to us having to stave off a meltdown), he told us that he had a finished one back at his workshop! After talking details with the artisan and then taking some much needed quiet time at the hostel, we returned again before dinner to reconnect boy and truck. It barely lasted 5 minutes before a big drop knocked off the wooden exhaust pipe, but Quinn didn’t care. He was in love.

Dinner that night was in a restaurant overlooking the market that we hadn’t seen earlier in the week. Quinn had actually discovered it when he noticed the first letters of his name mirrored those of the restaurant (Quinde, which I'm now realizing you can see in the top left corner of the photo above). It provided a stellar view over the market, and a charming end to our time in Otavalo.

Our taxi home that night was flagged by our children as they walked out of the restaurant. Mimi and Quinn, ever the small town kids, couldn’t get enough of just putting out their hand and having car stop for us. On more than one occasion, I had to apologetically wave off cabs overzealously flagged by our children when we were steps away from our destination. But by the end of the week, they were getting the hang of it.

I put my seatbelt on as we rolled away from the restaurant, pleasantly surprised that this cab had functioning ones for all of us. But just as we turned the corner and passed a police checkpoint, our driver reached over and released the buckle on mine. 

“There. That’s better.” He said. “Thanks for doing that.” This country is still clearly getting used to its traffic safety reforms. Our driver, making sure that our last night in Otavalo wasn’t too idyllic, presumed I had just put my seat on so he didn’t get a ticket. Nope. Mostly because I didn’t want to die. Tomato, tomato.

But perhaps the nicest part of the evening was that we had been out all afternoon, and Aimee didn’t have to abruptly excuse herself even once. She was finally turning the corner! Which was good, because we had a 5 hour bus ride the next day.

A day in the life

Aimee was still fighting off the last remnants of her stomach bug on Friday, so I took the kids into town to run some errands. ATMs compatible with international debit cards are relatively hard to come by in Ecuador (and are non-existent in the small town we were heading next), so we went to the main bank in town to get enough money for the next week or so. I gave the kids a quick lesson in travel safety when they ask-shouted in the middle of Otavalo’s busiest street, “HOW MUCH MONEY DID YOU GET, DAD?”

But thankfully Ecuador is a pretty safe place. Nothing came of it. And all fairness to our kids, they aren’t totally naive. They knew the town was safe enough, and could probably navigate it on their own at this point.

Walking around that morning brought to mind a moment from our last day in Cotacachi, when Lucia sent Samuel to the market for some eggs. Quinn wanted to tag along, and we knew that he’d be perfectly safe with the 10 year old. Kids are given more responsibility in environments like this, and with practice, live up to the expectations. 

Aimee and I definitely had to challenge ourselves to allow just the right amount of freedom for our kids to have their own growth opportunities that month. It wasn’t easy when we ourselves were out of our element, but it was definitely worth it.

Ok, I’ll figure out how to parent on my own time. We can get back to me having too much cash in my pocket. A new charango meant a new charango case.

This case says, “I went to South America this summer and I want you to know that.”

There weren’t a ton of options.

Since we were in no rush, we made a stop at our favorite cafe. It was Aimee and my favorite because they had fantastic coffee and a comfortable patio we could linger in while we figured out a plan for the day. It was the kids’ favorite because the juice glasses were the size of their heads.

A belly full of fruit sugars led to a particularly spirited round of Jenga.

It was a delightfully lazy morning, but we did have a few more errands to run. We needed some envelopes to go with the five handmade greeting cards we had bought in the market. So we went to a papeleria where I knew we’d be able to buy them individually. I absolutely love how stores are set up in this part of the world. Need a piece of rope? Go to the rope shop below the owner’s apartment. It’s between the wheelbarrow shop and the wire shop, just down the street from the nail and screw shop. But most charming of all, I needed some thread to fix a button on my pants. So I went to the thread shop, where I purchased a single sewing needed with a couple feet of thread already tied to it for all of $0.10. I almost felt bad taking the owners attention for such a small sale, but he didn’t seem to mind. With errands complete, we headed back to the hostel and were pleased to see Aimee functioning at no less than 80%.

That evening, Gloria, our neighbor from North Carolina, invited us, the Swiss/French resident, Jose, and Matilde to the common area of the hostel for some homemade brownies. But as she was baking them, her gas went out. Natural gas piping (or really any reliable plumbing for that matter) doesn’t exist in Ecuador, so everyone has small propane tanks attached to each of their appliances. Tank exchange trucks run through the city at all hours of the day, so a refill is never far away. In fact, the catchy, indigenous-flavored tune the trucks played to announce their proximity had become the soundtrack of our trip. All of us were humming it constantly.

After delaying our gathering first to 7pm and then to 8pm, she eventually just threw in the towel. Brownies weren’t in the cards for that night, so we met over some chips, tea, and whatever else anyone had laying around their room. It was great to get to know the other residents a bit better. We learned that Ernesto, the Swiss/French flute playing amateur pastor, kept coming back to Ecuador to escape the highly scheduled, routine-based daily life in Switzerland. That’s per his fully Swiss wife, who joins him for a coupe of weeks every summer and told Matilde that Ernesto comes down here because he loves that there are “no rules in Ecuador.” I think that’s a bit debatable, but I’m sure compared to Swiss life, Otavalo is a veritable Wild West.

Gloria had actually suffered a mild stroke earlier that year. But the health care in northern Ecuador is good enough (as was her love for the area) that she decided to stick with her plan of full time residence. The place was filled with a decidedly quirky batch of people (as are most hostels), and we loved every bit of it.