Road trip to the beach

On the good advice of a colleague, we left Wednesday right after school to get the first two hours of the 5 1/2 hour drive to the closest beach out of the way. We spent Wed. night in the town (village?) of Mindo. We did not take any pictures during the drive down to the beach, so I will try to paint the scenery picture with words.
Quito is dry and brown (at least at this time of year). The drive north of Quito, past the airport, through the industrial suburbs, to get around Pichincha volcano is ... not very charming. The mountain sides have little, or no vegetation. The colour is predominantly sere. Then the road turns west and so begins the long descent from 2800 meters down to sea level. Almost immediately, everything is green. The vegetation on the west side of the mountain range is described as cloud forest vegetation. It is lush, green and dense. Tall trees are covered in lianas, orchids and epiphytes (plants that grow on other plants in a non-parasitic relationship - this is possible because of the continuous moisture in the fog or clouds). Mindo is renowned for its cloud forest and we will return there to explore more closely the abundant bird life and orchids.

Morning view from Dragonfly Inn, Mindo 


We left Mindo early on Thursday morning to continue the journey to Same (pronounced sawmay) beach. Once we descended from the cloudforest, we came upon an area rich with bamboo groves. In places the bamboo arched over the road. It was very picturesque, and although the road is in excellent condition all the way, it is very narrow, with no shoulders to pull over onto to take pictures. All along the way there are many small-holder farms with mixed crops. They seem to all have a couple of cows grazing on the margins of fields, or on the hillsides, and there are always plenty of chickens scratching out insects everywhere. We saw small and large sections with banana plants, rubber trees, cocoa trees, mango trees, orange trees, passion fruit, and sugar cane. Every home is surrounded by hedges of flowering bouganvilleas, or hibiscus, or multi-coloured bushes. As we got closer to the coast there were huge plantations of oil-palm trees, and the processing plants to extract the oil. The road even expanded to 4 lanes for a couple of stretches down in the lowlands. We also passed through several towns, each one bustling with stalls selling fruit and "platos tipicos" (local food).

Finally - we arrived (320 kms later) at Cabanas Isla del Sol. Our bungalow was right on the beach.



 Although the weather was overcast the whole time, it was still refreshing to walk on the beach, hang out in the hammock and fall asleep to the sound of the surf. We explored the coastline north and south, and ate delicious shrimp ceviche, and coconut fish and prawns. After 3 nights on the beach, filling our bodies with oxygen-rich air we were ready to head back up up the hill to the thin air of Quito. We left at 6:30 am to avoid the heavy traffic of all  the other Quitenos who had also headed to the beach for the long weekend.