Nov 22, 2016


Chocolate! This morning was all about chocolate, what's not to like? After a leisurely breakfast, serenaded by a bazillion different singing birds, we walked into the town of Mindo to see the Yumas Artesenal Chocolate shop in action. I had a great tour of it and learned so much more about chocolate. It is pretty time consuming to make it the natural way, but also very interesting to see (and taste). I was pleased that they spoke slowly so that I was able to understand most of what was said. Still need to work on speaking Spanish though...


Had a great ride back into the city with a guy that usually leads birding tours. He was really interesting and surprisingly, traffic wasn't too bad, miraculous for Quito.


Then it was time to get settled in a new hostal and organize the next day. I managed to get on a trip to Cotopaxi. This meant digging through all of my clothes to find enough layers to stay warm. We don't go right to the top of the volcano, but go up pretty high, then hike and bike. Hasta manana...