The last five days have been super crazy - we got to Cuenca and met up with our host families on Thursday but before I write anything going into that experience I wanted to talk about our trip to Mindo, the cloud forest.
Mindo is one of the most biodiverse places in the world, with something like over a hundred different species of orchids and like 60 types of hummingbirds or something crazy like that. Ecuador in general ranks among the most biodiverse countries, particularly in relation to its size. The "hotel" (really a collection of small cabins) we stayed at was called the Mariposaria, which had its own butterfly house. The first night we were there we got to experience the weird phenomenon where at around 6pm all the butterflies lose their shit and start flying everywhere all at once. It was about 50% awesome and 50% terrifying - a lot of the butterflies were actually huge, like the size of a bat (disclaimer: I know very little about bats and am prone to exaggeration) and really into flying as close as possible to our faces. Unfortunately, it was dusk and there wasn't good enough lighting to get decent pictures of the craziness. We got to return in the morning though, when the sun was out and the butterflies were a little less in sane and more willing to chill out, let us hold them, and open up their wings to pose for a photo shoot.
That day we were also supposed to go for a short three-mile hike to swim in a waterfall in the forest. Awesome, we were all pretty stoked on that. 
(This is my stoked face)
So we we crossed the river and started our hike which we discovered was, yes, three miles... Straight up a mountain. Those of us who aren't so accustomed to hiking agreed that it was one of the hardest hikes we've ever done, especially considering some of us are still adjusting to the altitude.
Once we dragged ourselves to the top, we were excited to see that we got to take another bigger gondola like the one pictured above to get to the waterfall on the other side of the valley. Until we realized the gondola was broken. Since the group attempting to fix it seemed incredibly perplexed, we decided to start on the hour-long hike to the waterfall instead, all the way down and across the valley in the hopes that once we made it there and swam for a while they would have the gondola up and running again (spoiler alert: nope)
After a hike that was already pretty much double what it was supposed to be, the swim in the waterfall was one of the most refreshing things we could have asked for. But afterwards, when we realized that we were going to have to hike back up the mountain, the happiness was starting to wear off. We had been told we'd be back to the hotel for lunch by noon, and at this point it was after 1 and most of us were exhausted and hungry. I had a few snacks in my backpack that my mom had given me for the airplane ride a few days previously that I was able to share, but two power bars, flaxseed sesame cookies, and a bag of caramels still spread pretty thin among a group of college kids. Most of us had already long since finished the bottles of water we brought, and none of us had come prepared for the afternoon rainstorms.
Finally, exhausted and soaked with rain and sweat, we made it back to the gondola (still broken) and were able to catch rides from there back to the hotel three hours later than we were supposed to. In all, I think we hiked around 8 miles, more than half of it very steep uphill hiking. It was by far the most intense and painful hike I have ever been on, but there's something really rewarding about thinking you're going to collapse/pass out and then by some miracle not doing that.
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