4th August - Thursday
    Had breakfast at eight after a stroll down to the river. Saw a hawk in a tree, and some tadpoles and young frogs. Set off for the "short drive" to Mindo. At lunchtime, after a drive along mountain roads, we arrived at Nanegal. We'd seen a few turkey vultures along the way. We had also crossed a bridge made from planks, of which about 6 were broken. Oliver kindly walked across to guide me off on the best route; or perhaps he didn't fancy being a passenger on the crossing! The tactic was to go across the bridge as fast as I could, and try to put my wheels down on the highest parts of the ruts on the far side, thus keeping the sump off the ground. When we reached the other side of the ravine, we looked back at the bridge to count eight broken planks. A few minutes later we met a man on a horse who we photographed. His name was Fagosto.

    Once we'd left Nanagal we hit la careterra mejor a Nanagalito, where we picked up a soldier who showed us the way to Mindo. There was only one way down from the main road, and that track finished at Mindo. We booked into the Guadual hostel at about 3 o'clock and had coffee. Dad had a shower, which involved lots of disconnection and connection of electrical appliances.

    We went for a short walk in the jungle before dinner. On the way we called at the laundry - run by Carmelita (aged 80+) to drop off Dad's bag of dirty clothes. Elizabeth (our landlady) took us down there with her younger son. She has three daughters and two sons. In the jungle we saw a wild orange tree (which we later found out, through bitter experience, was really a lemon tree - the fruits just look like oranges), an unidentified bird of prey, and a sapphire blue starling. The bird of prey had appeared right on cue just after I had said to the others, "look at that tree - surely there should be a hawk up there surveying the landscape?".
     
     

    View from the track to Mindo
    Elizabeth
    Carmelita

    Tomorrow, we will head along the same track, but go a lot further to find "Cock on the rock". Elizabeth is going to prepare some cheese sandwiches for us. Her husband, Segundo Enriquez, was mending the windows when we got back. He is a surveyor, working on the roads.

    Oli had a shower, and we had a very good meal of soup followed by rice and lentils, washed down with a couple of bottles of Pilsener. The table was made of a beautiful, silky wood called teme. Once back in Quito we found out that, although the locals use the wood as a cheap, local resource, it would cost us around a thousand pounds to have a table made from teme and shipped back to UK. Elizabeth kept sprouting beetroot tops in small glass dishes on all the table tops. They looked very pretty.