In early 2020, before the pandemic hit, I took Brady to Singapore for a short trip. One of the activities we did was visit the Cloud Forest in Garden by the Bay. Inside a beautiful glass dome was a man-made cloud forest that encompassed many of the vegetation as the real ones: waterfall and lush mountainous layers of a vast array of plants. Now we were going to an actual real cloud forest, in Mindo Valley, located approximately 100 kilometers from Quito!
Javier arrived at exactly the agreed time and we started our way to Mindo at around 10am. Compared to all the road trips we had gone on thus far, the two hour drive to Mindo was a piece of cake. We passed by the town center which had only ten street perimeter. There were some local shops that sold souvenir items and like any other town we had been to, it was quiet. The only people we saw were locals, either minding the shops or just hanging around as a group. The streets and shops looked quite old and beaten as far as we could tell. But then again, Mindo is a heavily visited spot not because of city life but for its biodiversity and many outdoor activities such as hiking, trekking, river rafting, canyoning and tubing.
Javier continued driving past the town and after twisting and turning through a forest of trees and bushes, we finally arrived at the boutique hotel Las Terrazas de Dana Boutique Lodge & Spa. I fell in love with the property immediately. The main building had a huge toucan on its outer wall, with the hotel name next to the big colorful bird. We got off the van and walked into the ground floor reception that had no doors, but had a comfortable seating area and shelf filled with binoculars and bird watching books. David, the owner of the hotel, came in with a big smile and greeted us. I felt like I had known David forever. Before we had arrived in Ecuador, I had already started to communicate with David, asking him all sorts of questions about logistics and activities. He was always prompt with responses, gave me a lot of details that I hadn’t thought of but actually needed, and didn’t seem to mind all the sporadic emails I sent him.
He was every bit as friendly and hospitable as his email persona. After a warm welcome, David introduced his associate Christian to us. Christian would be the main person attending to our day to day needs. David gave us a quick tour of the property. Right upstairs to the reception was the restaurant where they served all three meals. Breakfast was included in our package but lunch and dinner would be provided at extra cost. Next to the main building was the swimming pool with lounge chairs, lots of running space and individual changing rooms.
The guest villas were spread across a few two-story buildings. We booked a family villa that came with a big balcony. Whenever we were not exploring outside, we would be sitting around a square table on the balcony, chatting as a family or reading or catching up with work. The inside of the villa was spacious enough for our family of four. It had a queen size bed and two single beds. This would be the longest stretch of time that our family had to share one large room together. In the beginning, I was a bit nervous on how the different sleep and wake schedules would play out. It turned out that we all would be early risers due to the birds’ chirping. As for Brady’s early sleep schedule, after he fell asleep, each of us would quietly work or read on the balcony terrace or on the bed.
There were no other guests staying at the hotel when we checked in. I felt really bad for David’s business but didn’t mind the space and quietness to ourselves. Over the course of our stay, there would be a couple of guests staying for a night or two, usually on the back of a bird-watch tour that David’s company organized. Given the biodiversity of Mindo Valley, it was a very popular destination for tourists from inside or outside Ecuador to come and bird watch. The area boasts at least 500 species of birds! Even when we just sat on the hotel’s restaurant terrace waiting for food to come, we could see many different kinds of colorful birds come and go.
As I was growing up, along the way for whatever reason, I became an ornithophobic, which is just a fancy word for having bird phobia. Then about a decade ago, for no particular reason I could think of, I snapped out of the phobia altogether. Perhaps I had learned to appreciate each and every creation as God’s work of beauty and wonder. In fact, I had turned the other way around and fell in love with birds. Therefore, knowing Mindo Valley is famous for the variety of birds, I asked David to organize a bird watch tour for Brian and me. I did invite the kids but after knowing the tour involves waking up at 5:30 am, they politely declined. Just to give an example of how attentive David is, he had the kitchen make us fresh baked muffins to take into our room the night before. Then he arranged a fresh and hot pot of coffee stored in a thermos to be placed on the table right outside the reception, where we would be waiting for our guide Julia.
Brian and I were actually excited to go on the bird watch tour by ourselves. It was our first “date” since embarking on the gap year journey. Julia is from Mindo, and had been a bird guide for a long time. She took us to the higher mountains and carried a powerful telescope with tripods as we slowly walked down from the mountains, stopping every few steps in order to spot the birds. Like the Amazon, we depended on Julia’s eyes and ears to point out the birds to us. These creatures were quick, quiet and camouflaged. Of course as with all wildlife viewing, it just boiled down to our luck that day, a bit of hit and miss. Amongst some of the birds we spotted were different types of tanagers, yellow-throat toucans, coronets, and hummingbirds. When we were finished and back in the hotel, it was only late morning and the kids had just finished breakfast in the room.
While I did contemplate taking the kids tubing as an activity, I decided to scrap that. There are many places where we can do tubing but not many places located in a cloud forest. Instead, we took the kids to a famous butterfly farm and garden. It was such a magical experience to be up close and personal to all the different stages of metamorphosis. And there were so many varieties of butterflies flying around us. A couple of them even landed on Brianne’s finger.
One of our favorite tours was none other than the visit to the local chocolate farm — El Quetzal de Mindo. The farm was near the town center, to which we could in theory go by foot. However, we did not want to risk Brady asking us to carry him mid-way or plainly refuse to walk any further, so we asked David to arrange for a taxi to pick us up. The ride itself was only a few minutes. Once we walked inside the chocolate building, we could smell the rich and sweet aroma of cocoa right away. There was a station that served different chocolate drinks and a shop that sold many varieties of chocolate products including jam and honey. Needless to say, the kids were most excited about the chocolate tasting part of the tour, but that was kept to the end. Our guide took us through the entire chocolate production process, from the cocoa trees that grew in the farm, to picking cocoa beans, to sorting them, to the fermentation and drying of the beans, to roasting them, to refining them and finally even the wrapping of the chocolate bar. There was so much to learn! One realization after the tour was that most of the chocolate bars we had purchased from grocery stores were very low quality. They are mostly sugar with little percentage of actual cocoa, and even that small cocoa composition is made with low grade cocoa beans. The high quality beans and higher cocoa content of the chocolate we had at El Quetzal tastes less sweet, more rich and slightly more bitter than what we were used to (the cheap chocolate). But it was good. We bought a number of different flavored chocolate bars to take back to friends and family. Due to its location near the Equator and with the associated weather, along with some African countries, Ecuador is actually one of the highest quality cocoa bean growers in the world!
When my sister and her family visited Mindo a few months before we did, they spent a few days doing volunteer work at a local community center named Salem Ecuador. This was a center built by a German NGO for the purpose of taking in abused children and teeangers, and providing them a safe house for play and education. Through my sister’s contact, we were able to arrange a visit to the center. The Director was from Germany and had been overseeing the center for five years. The property had a few one to two story buildings made with natural wood. There was also a large lawn area for children to run around. It even had a small farm that grew different kinds of vegetables and fruits. Besides taking us around the property and letting us watch some kids learn and play, the Director also explained to us the issues of domestic violence in the area which gave rise to abuses at home. When the tourism industry was busy, the center also provided sewing lessons and facilities for women to make products to sell in stores as a way of generating income. We also learned about their effort to provide counseling to the families in order to improve situations at home, but these processes often take a long time and the center could only help the children for as long as the parents allow. It is always humbling to learn of the challenges that other humans face. On one hand, it certainly makes us feel more blessed and fortunate than ever. On the other hand, it pains us to see so much need and so little we could actually do to help.
Our plan was to stay in Mindo for one full week. After a few days there, I consulted with David on the logistics of getting our covid tests done to prepare for the return to the U.S. When I first communicated with him through email on this topic, I was under the impression that there was a shopping center around 45 minutes drive from the hotel. David even went there himself to take the test and confirm the result turnaround time so that everything would go smoothly for us. However, upon discussing with David some more on the logistics, it appeared that the drive to the shopping center would be closer to two hours, which would make it a four hour round-trip drive. With the wait time and everything included, one full day would be gone just for doing the test. I discussed it with Brian and we both didn’t want to earmark a day just for the purposes of driving to and from the test center. It was the same distance as driving back to Quito! What’s more, I knew that one of the covid test centers in Quito was just two streets down from the Airbnb that we stayed in because Jubilee and Bridgette took their tests there.
It was time to pivot. I contacted Cheryl, our Quito Airbnb host and asked if her apartment was available for us to stay for two nights. Her son responded and said it was available, and they would be delighted to host us again. I then went to David and apologized for the fact that we had to cut our stay short by two nights. I explained to him the exhaustion for our family on the logistics to take the covid test at the shopping center, especially right before taking a long flight out to San Francisco. He understood and graciously advised that he would not charge us any penalty for the shortened stay. I had traveled a fair amount in my life, for leisure and for work. David has to be one of the top, if not the very top, hotelier I have ever met. One could argue that this over-the-top hospitality was only due to the reduction in tourists but I don’t think that is the case. During our stay there, David was very busy organizing bird tours for other guests, even though they might not have spent the night at the hotel. It is David’s personality that makes the difference: his friendliness, proactiveness, enthusiasm and well-connectedness.
For our last day in Mindo, we decided to go for a cable car ride across the lush mountains, just to soak in as much of the cloud forest as we could before leaving. Javier would only be arriving after lunch time so we had the whole morning to ourselves. As we were gushing at how beautiful the landscape was, Brady quietly informed us, “I spot a toucan.” When he first said it, we still couldn’t quite grasp what he was saying. Then he repeated himself. Immediately we saw not just one, but two toucans sitting on a tree branch a few feet from us. We could not believe our luck! When Brian and I went bird watching with Julia, the one toucan we saw was through a telescope and it was far away. This time, there were two of them in front of our naked eyes. At that moment I really felt like yanking the cable car to make it stop moving. Could we just stop and take a few minutes to be with these beautiful birds? But the cable car kept going its path and the toucans were out of sight within a couple of minutes. We kept on thanking Brady for his keen observation that allowed us to sight the toucans. At that moment, I couldn’t help but admire how the quiet and clear heads of young children allow them to view and sense things that the busy minds of adults could not. I keep learning from my children and young people all the time.
Javier arrived timely as always. After sitting comfortably in the clean and well-maintained van for two hours, we recognize the familiar neighborhood. Our plan was to unpack the must-need items for the next couple days and then walk over to the lab to take the covid test. No appointment was allowed. We did not know how long the line would be but took comfort in that it closed at 8pm so there was sufficient time cushion. There were not a lot of people inside the test center but certainly more than a few. The registration process actually took longer than I expected. The staff took all our passports and slowly input the details into the computer. The registration and wait time together took one whole hour. I told Brian to take the kids outside and wait where there were less people and more fresh air. When it came close to our turn, I would text him and they could go in then. When it came to our turn, a nurse led us into a private room. I begged the technician to be gentle with all of us, especially with little Brady. Of course, he was the first volunteer to get it done and over with. Like the last time, Brady didn’t flinch or complain, and he was all done within a minute. None of us enjoyed the procedure but endured it quietly. As we walked home, Brian and I looked at each other: there went another US$800!
