Chris and Chris Break Free

We awoke to a beautiful sunny, cloudless day and a gentle ocean breeze. After an early morning stroll along the beach, Gaby, the girl who helps Elizabeth in the kitchen, prepared coffee and we took our mugs down to the beach to watch the surfers.… [Read more]

Yesterday was a long, uneventful travel day, in spite of sleeping in and missing the 6:00 bus (doh!). No worries, we caught the 7:00 bus instead.  It took 9 hours and 3 buses to travel 340 km from Mindo to Canoa, via Santo Domingo and Pedernales at a cost of $10.50 each. … [Read more]

We have decided to leave Mindo tomorrow (Wednesday) a few days earlier than planned.  A week has been long enough in Mindo and we’re ready to move on.  We plan to spend a few nights in a hostel on the beach before we meet up with Andy and Leo, our HelpX hosts who we plan to stay with in a “work for room and board” arrangement.… [Read more]

Last Sunday we met up with Arya, a fellow student we met at our Spanish School in Quito.  Arya had emailed us last week to let us know she was coming to Mindo and would be staying in our hostel. … [Read more]

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been in Mindo for almost a week.  Once we got settled, our days quickly fell into a comfortable routine:   We wake up around 7:00 to the sounds of roosters cock-a-doodle-doing and to the sight of exotic birds and hummingbirds just outside our bedroom window.… [Read more]

We arrived in Mindo yesterday without any problems.  The bus station was pretty quiet at 8:00 in the morning and the biggest menace we faced was two women who were Jehovah’s Witnesses who tried to preach their message to us.  … [Read more]

Today we finished our Spanish lessons, at least for now.  I completed six days, four hours each day of one-on-one lessons; Chris completed three days.  We learned the basics and we both feel we havet a good foundation from these lessons. … [Read more]

On Sunday, we went to “la mitad del mundo” – the middle of the earth.  Ciudad La Mitad del Mundo is a tourist complex set up on the site where, in 1736, French explorer and scientist Charles-Marie de la Condamine made his final calculations to determine the precise equatorial line.… [Read more]

Chris is back in the land of the living. Thank goodness! Yesterday we ventured out together, the first time for Chris since Tuesday.  We decided to stay relatively close to the hostel, just in case.  … [Read more]

We have been living at the Traveller’s Inn for over a week now and plan to stay until Wednesday. This is our first time in a hostel and we didn’t really know what to expect. We selected this particular hostel mainly based on reviews we read online.… [Read more]