Mindo Lindo Day 2

On Day 2 in Mindo, all seven of us met up at 7:30 and headed off on the beautiful 30 minute walk to the Mariposario, where, so we'd been told, they served American-style pancakes for breakfast. As none of us had eaten said pancakes in months, we were all eager for such a delightful breakfast. To our delight they served both pancakes and french toast. And they were good, very good. Looking around the Mariposario wasn't too traumatizing either:After our delightul breakfast, we headed into the Mariposario where a very nice Equatoriano guy told us a little about the development of various butterflies. We then actually got to see some emerge from their cocoons. There's on in the 2 o'clock position in the process of emerging.
And here's one newly hatched (is that the right word?)
Here's a coccon up close. Pretty cool handiwork, huh.
After that, we entered the sanctuary of the butterflies and spent a good two hours or so watching them fly about. They were beautiful, and if you were patient (and used a bit of rotten banana juice), you could get them to land on you... or your camera
There was a pretty cool chart that helped us identify the different species:
This, for example, is Heliconius sara:
And this is Heliconius erato: (Just in case you were wanting to know...)
We were actually joined in our walk to the Mariposario by some incredibly cute dogs. Meet Pancakes and Buddy. They were actually prominent figures on our trip. We'd met Buddy the day before, and he showed up pretty much anytime we went anywhere. They walked with us the entire way out to the Mariposario, and didn't quite understand why they weren't allowed to join us for breakfast.
When we got back to town for lunch, Buddy found us again and laid at my feet under the table until we were done. Because Sunday was election day in Ecuador, there weren't as many buses running, so we decided to go buy tickets while we were in town. To our dismay, we found out that all the buses were full except for the last one at 5 pm, and it only had five spots available. As all of us had to get back the next day (the college kids had class and Justin and I were working in the hospital - see his post), we were a little distressed. The guys, being incredibly chivalrous, gave us the tickets and said that they could stand.
That settled we hiked for about an hour out to a part of the river where we could swim. It was yet again a beautiful hike, and, of course, Buddy joined us. By this point pretty much every girl there wanted to take him home. As I had named him, I felt that gave me dibs, but I wasn't quite sure how to hide a 70 pound hyperactive dog in my room for the next two weeks, and Justin didn't seem to think that customs would like finding a dog in my suitcase. Sigh. After a dip in a very cold river (Ben and I were really the only ones who tried to swim), we hitched a ride back in the bed of some nice guy's truck (I love the fact that this is perfectly legal - its so much fun to ride standing up and feeling the breeze) to check out of our hostel and arrive early enough to ensure the guys actually got on the bus.
The bus ride back was a bit miserable. Justin got the misfortune of sitting on the edge of a cushion next to a lady with a vomiting 7 yr old, Matt got to stand basically the whole time, and bus rides in Ecuador in general are somewhat nausea inducing. We finally got back well after dark, and with a bit of sadness bade our Mindo friends farewell.
overal though, Mindo day 2: Success!!