Entries about freshwater swimming

Sunday 20th July

Bus journey from Quito to Mindo. Mindo is a tiny village surrounded by mountains covered in cloud forest, which makes up one of the most biodiverse areas on Earth. This setting is certainly dramatic.

My hostel was very quiet. I'd booked a bed in a 2-bed dorm, which along with the other dorms was within the owner's house, but nobody else arrived to take the other bed. In fact I seemed to be the only person booked into a dorm the whole time I was there! This meant it was very quiet, peaceful and relaxing.

For dinner I had a whole steamed tilapia fish, learning through the process of ordering that the Spanish word for steamed is 'al vapor'... makes sense considering what the process of steaming is. I'd never come across steamed food on a menu in Ecuador before.

Monday 21st July

At breakfast I saw hummingbirds for the first time since Dave and I did the Inca Trail in Peru five years ago!

After some scrambled eggs, pineapple juice, melon slices, toast, jam and coffee I looked round the little orchid garden attached to the hostel, but it evidently wasn't the right time of year to see them because not very many were in flower. It was still nice to wander round though.

After that I booked a ziplining trip for the afternoon and walked to a butterfly farm. It was very hot and sunny and I soon left paved roads behind; as I walked along the whitish dirt road in the middle of lush greenery, with the sun beating down on my head, I got a sudden image in my head of the cover of my copy of 'As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning', which shows the back of Laurie Lee as he walks by himself along a road in the middle of nowhere in Spain.

At the butterfly farm I saw some bright shiny silver jewel-like chrysalises that are designed to look like water drops, a butterfly in the process of breaking out of a normal-coloured chrysalis, and lots of brightly coloured butterflies! I especially liked the ones that were grey, brown and black on one side of their wings but then electric blue on the other side when they opened them. There were bowls of overripe bananas around, food for the butterflies, and when I dipped my finger in the juice, butterflies would then land on it.

My afternoon ziplining trip was an exhiliarating experience, zipping between beautiful valleys and mountains within the cloud forest. There were ten lines. I was put with two small groups of Germans and one of Ecuadorians. We saw two toucans in the branches of a tree at one point - I was so happy! I love toucans and I hadn't seen any since Dave and I saw some in Brazil on the same trip five years ago that I just mentioned above.

On the way back I started walking but was then given a lift the rest of the way by a group of girls who'd been in my group. It had clouded over by the time the ziplining had begun, and just as they dropped me off at the end of my road it started pouring with rain.

A couple of hours later, when I went out for dinner, the rain had stopped. I went to a café known for its brownies, though I didn't have room for one after I'd had my main. They didn't actually have any hot main dishes left by that time, only salads and sandwiches, so I had a really thick tuna sandwich with a side of yuca chips and a chocolate milkshake. I made a mental note to come back the next day for lunch.

Tuesday 22nd July

First thing this morning I went on a cable car over a forested gorge to a protected forest, where there was a long walking trail leading to and past six different waterfalls. I was one of the first people there so I had a lovely peaceful walk with nobody else around for the majority of the time. It was very sunny again this morning.

It took a couple of hours to do the main walk, which went past five of the waterfalls. Then there was a shorter, separate path to the sixth waterfall, which was also the biggest. I swam in the pool and river beneath it - the water was so refreshing and cool - very very welcome considering how hot and sweaty I was after my long hike! The current was very strong so when I tried to swim to the waterfall itself to get underneath it, I couldn't because the current pushed me back so hard. I was trying to swim forwards but ended up just swimming on the spot.

I wanted to stay in there for hours but eventually dragged myself out, got changed and hiked back to the cable car station. Then I walked the 4 km back to the hostel (I'd got a taxi on the way there in the morning). It was all downhill but because I was already tired from the long hike, I arrived pretty exhausted.

It was about 3pm when I arrived back, so as soon as I'd dumped my stuff I went straight back out again for some lunch at the same café I'd been to for dinner the night before. This time I went for the soup of the day (cream of broccoli and asparagus), a chocolate milkshake, Fanta and one of their famous chocolate brownies. I was stuffed by the time I finished.

I then went back to the hostel for a bit before going to an internet café for a couple of hours. I wasn't particularly hungry for dinner because of how late I'd had lunch, so I left dinner as late as I could and then only had a plate of chips.

A quiet and very relaxing morning today. First of all we wandered round town doing some shopping and looking at the sugar cane stalls and the men slinging and pulling around long piles of toffee-like mixture (taffy) from hooks at the side of shop doorways.

While Dave was in a handicraft shop I suddenly thought of lighting a candle for Dad in the Basilica, so that's what I did.

Then we moved on to one of several massage parlours lined up on the other side of the main square and had amazing hour-long full body massages for only $20 each.

We left the place afterwards completely relaxed and ambled over to the Central Market where we had some lunch at a stall.

Dave had seco de pollo, which he loved, and I had a delicious llapingacho, which is a plate of fried cheese & mashed potato cakes, a fried egg, fried slices of chorizo sausage, rice, chopped beetroot, shredded lettuce and a big chunk of avocado.

At 12 we went on our next excursion... ziplining! The setting of this was spectacular, set in forested mountains close to Baños.

On at least two occasions we ziplined from one side of a valley to the other. There were a total of six lines with a bit of hiking to get from each one to the next.

On three of them we sat in the normal position, on two we got to lie in a 'Superman' position and on one we ziplined hanging upside down.

It was all fantastic. Just to top it all off, as we returned from the final zipline to the where we'd been given the equipment at the start, we passed a house with four incredibly cute puppies who came up to us to say hello. I think they were Golden Retrievers.

After dinner and a game or two or pool we went back to the hot thermal baths to try out their evening session, which runs from 6-9.30pm. It was busier and more touristy than when we went during daylight - on that occasion we were the only tourists there. This time four out of five of the pools were open. We did several rounds of going in the hot one, then the bigger cold one, then the extremely hot one downstairs then the small circular cold one next to it and then back again to the hot one upstairs.

After eventually leaving the baths we explored the waterfall area next door before going back to the hostel.

We shared an amazing pizza there before going to bed tired but extremely happy.

Edit from January 2019: Finch Bay appears to be called Playa de los Alemanes (German Beach) on Google Maps - maybe Finch Bay is the unofficial name.

Breakfast and then off to Guayaquil Airport. We had to get our bags checked and tagged at the Galápagos Biosecurity Control Inspection & Quarantine desk first and then move to another desk next door to pay $10 each for our Tourist Control Cards.

We arrived at Baltra Island to hot breeze. The runway and terminal were both tiny, set in the midst of obviously volcanic rock, red earth and dry vegetation on every side.

From the airport we we were driven in a LAN bus to the port, where we got on a ferry to the main island, Santa Cruz. Luggage went on the flat top of the boat whilst all the people went inside. We saw our first blue-footed boobies!

On arrival we waited for a bus, only to be told by the taxi drivers that the buses have gone for the day. I didn't believe them, thinking they were only saying that to make us get an $18 taxi ride instead, so we hung around for a bit longer. Then a new ferryload of people arrived and I asked a tour guide if either of the two buses in the bar park were public ones - they had the same name as the local buses mentioned in our guidebook - but he said no. It turned out they had been commissioned for his tour group and we were not allowed on. So we thought "sod it" and just got a taxi to Puerto Ayora after all - we couldn't afford the time to hang around any longer.

At about two-ish we arrived at our hostel, the Galápagos Best Homestay. Dave's name was written on a welcome whiteboard on the outer wall! The owner was really friendly and our room had a kitchenette and free drinking water from a big container (like on the mainland, the tap water isn't safe to drink).

Almost straight after checking in to our hostel we went out on our first excursion... a trip by water taxi to a small, curved, enclosed beach called Finch Bay. We walked through the town centre to get to the dock.

We saw mangroves and a massive heron on the final short walk to the beach.

Finch Bay has wonderful white sand.

Then we hiked for 25 minutes to Las Grietas, a fissure in some rocks maybe about 10 metres wide - wide enough for people to swim in.

It's filled with a mixture of seawater and natural fresh water that comes through the ground. It was wonderfully, deliciously cool, not to mention pretty clear - when snorkelling, I could see the ground about 40 feet below! I saw some small, well-camouflaged fish that stayed on underwater rocks, and a small shoal of much larger fish.

We stopped at Finch Bay on the way back and I had another swim - Dave had got changed already so didn't get back into his wet stuff. The beach was sandy and instead of having rocky headlands on each side, it was flanked with mangroves. The sea was clearly very salty because I could float on my back without having to breath in at all.

We stopped at a small supermarket on our way back and bought some dinner - a type of Ecuadorian sausage I've had before that is a lot like a frankfurter but shorter and much fatter, an onion, some mayonnaise and some rolls. We cooked half of the sausages for dinner and saved the others for breakfast tomorrow morning.

The first excursion we went on today was to a waterfall trail in the forest a short taxi ride from Puerto Misahuallí. We'd packed up our stuff and left it at the Reception hut before we went, because we had to check out by 12pm, when we knew we'd be at the waterfalls.

The trail followed a river, passing some smaller waterfalls before reaching the biggest one at the end. There were several swimming holes on the way but despite the humidity we saved ourselves for the one at the end in front of the big waterfall. It took at least 45 minutes to get there. Twice we had to wade through the river rather perilously but luckily nobody fell in! They were at sections where it was more like a stream than a river, but the water was still very fast-running. We'd borrowed wellies from our accommodation so we didn't get wet.

Once we arrived at the big waterfall we got into the pool in front of it as quickly as possible. The water was lovely, cool and refreshing.

I floated on my back for a while and the view of the overhanging vegetation and rocks reminded me of the overhanging cathedral wall and vegetation at the Grand Hotel pool in Guayaquil. After a while I swam through the waterfall and stood up behind it. The force of the water drumming on my head and shoulders was tremendous.

To get out, we retraced our steps; on the way I saw a couple of giant black & electric blue butterflies but they evaded all my attempt to photograph them.

When we left the waterfalls we caught a taxi truck; it already had passengers in the front and back seats so we climbed into the open air back section. It reminded me of the only other time I've sat out on the back of a truck, in Koh Tao in Thailand.

Once the taxi truck had dropped us off in Misahuallí town centre we had to run the gauntlet of foam again. I walked tactically so avoided most of it, but others weren't so lucky. They didn't stop at foam either, as 'E' found out with the yellow paint that got thrown on her...

As soon as we arrived back we only had time to give back the wellies we'd borrowed and pick up our bags before we got another taxi truck to our next destination... the Jumandy cave system. This entrance to the site has turned into a local tourism hub with restaurants and an open air swimming pool using riverwater, so before we entered the caves themselves we had some late lunch at one of the restaurants. I had an old favourite, seco de pollo, and a blackberry milkshake. A man with a wooden leg stumped past our table while we were eating - only the second time I've seen a person with a wooden leg in real life, rather than metal or fibreglass (whatever is usually used in the UK).

The caves excursion was exciting. Our guide was an indigenous local doing a job that apparently generations of his family had done before him. He said that when the Spaniards first arrived centuries ago, the Jumandy people hid in these caves for five months to escape them. He spoke only Spanish but luckily the others translated for me.

There was a river running through a lot of the cave system so we had to wade a lot.

Right near the beginning there was a section where we had to wade up to our middles. Just beyond that was a short section where a line had been strung across and the water was too deep to touch the bottom so we had to pull ourselves across using the line instead. The others had given their valuables to the guide to carry across in a bag, but my camera was too big to fit. I had however cunningly put it in a plastic bag in advance, to keep it dry, so all I needed to do was tie a knot in it and zip the whole thing in my handbag. I ended up hanging my handbag round my neck and then pulling myself up and along to raise the bag up as much as I could. Only one corner of the bag got wet and the plastic bag didn't get wet at all. That was a very adrenalin-filled and exciting 20 seconds! It was like an exercise at the gym but with most of my body submersed in water and with the knowledge that if my grip on the rope broke then my camera might get soaked.

We had been warned beforehand that we would get very wet on the cave trip, so in our group we were all wearing our bikinis underneath our clothes and I was wearing my board shorts instead of trousers.We'd kept all these on after swimming at the waterfalls earlier.

Later on in the tour we had to squeeze through some very narrow sections of tunnel; we also passed by some stalagmites and stalactites.

Near the end we came across a waterfall with a small pool in front of it - the guide said the water in it is considered lucky - whether true or not, it certainly was refreshing! It was wonderful. It felt slightly surreal to be swimming around in my clothes underground.

Instead of retracing our steps, we exited the caves at a different location. After stepping out into open air we had to climb up a steep slope of rocks before following a path round through some countryside back to the complex. It was now raining. We returned the wellies we'd hired, picked up our bags and some of us got changed; I didn't change because the the facilties had wet floors and were really dark and didn't have anywhere to hang anything up. We were also in a rush. I just wrung out my top and shorts and hoped I'd dry out naturally on the bus back to Baños.

It was past 6pm by the time we left and our tickets from Tena had been booked for a particular time so we had no time to lose. We flagged down a taxi to take us to Tena as quickly as possible. We had bought tickets in advance for a particular time. We arrived at Tena bus terminal just in time thank goodness. On our way out of town we passed by a large dusty volleyball court in the town centre; a game was being played under floodlights. It seemed to be the focal point of local activity in the town.

We arrived at Baños quite late but as we walked from the bus terminal to our hostel we saw that Carnival foam celebrations were still in full swing... once we had checked in and rested a little some of the others went out for a drink and dance, but one or two of us were knackered so we just went to bed. The ceiling of our dorm was painted like a sunrise, a nice touch I thought. I did however have a bowl of chicken pasta at the hostel's bar before I went to bed.

'E' was woken up at 6am by a frantic phone call from her mother, who'd heard that at the rodeo in Babahoyo (a nearby town) one of the stands had collapsed, leaving about 15 dead and 60 injured. She'd forgotten that we were in Salitre and not Babahoyo.

Soberly, but also feeling relieved that the ricketty wooden stand we'd been sitting on had not also collapsed, we left Salitre between 9 and 10 am; the bus journey to Daule took half an hour or so. The first thing we did once we arrived was find an ATM and get some cash out - successfully, thank goodness. We wandered up to the riverbank next and 'E' asked a local about swimming places - he told her that a better place to swim wasn't in Daule itself but at a tiny hamlet called Limonal out in the countryside, further along the river, and we'd need to get a bus there.

Then we walked around for a while, checking out different eating places. 'E' was after a particular dish but nowhere seemed to do it, so in the end we sat down in a bakery and she had a type of sweet flaky pastry biscuit. I recognised it as a larger version of something I was given on both my flights from Madrid to Guayaquil. I still had a chocolate brownie left from the day before, so I didn't buy anything.

I was on a hat-buying mission next so we found a shop that mostly sold car equipment but also had some hats. The owner said they were $15 each, but after a couple of minutes he accepted 2 for $25. Then we walked to the place where we'd been told we could catch a bus to Limonal.

The bus dropped us at a crossroads and we got a motor rickshaw to take us the rest of the way. The 'beach' was actually on the other side of the river, so a man took us over in what looked like an old wooden rowing boat that was actually powered by motor. It was 25c each.

There were several families there. E and I took turns to swim - the water was refreshing and only took a second to get used to. The current was the strongest I've ever felt anywhere - before we got into the water I thought about swimming across and back again, but once I was actually in the river I realised it would be too dangerous to go out of my depth. The appearance of the river was quite deceptive, but if you stayed within your depth you were fine. We had a really good time; freshwater swimming in the middle of nowhere was a nice contrast to the dust and excitement and noise of the rodeo in Salitre.

After we'd both had a swim and got changed, I had a plate of 'seco de pato' for lunch at a shack nearby that only sold that one thing. 'Seco de pato' is a type of duck stew, and like the vast majority of dishes here, is served with rice. It was lovely, just what I needed.

A small boy paddled us back over the river. 'E' had some rice and beans at a shack by the riverbank before we carried on into Limonal. We thought we might have to get one bus to Daule and then another to Guayaquil, but as luck would have it only a minute later we saw a bus with 'Guayaquil' written on the front, so we jumped on that. It was only $1.25. The journey was pretty uneventful - more rice fields.

Arrived back in Guayaquil mid-afternoon.