Ecuador 2020- Mindo. The night walk in the forest.
Mindo is in the Sierra region, i.e. the mountain one. Two and a half hours drive from Quito, more or less. Nature in Ecuador is beautiful and wild wherever you go.
It is mostly famous for the mariposarios, specific places for the reproduction of butterflies, but the reality is that there is a lot more to do. We keep ourselves busy with tubing, house tree, cable car, massages, coffee and chocolate degustation.
The place we stay is a small, beautiful wooden neat hotel with 3 or 4 rooms and we occupy all of them as we are a big group.
It is run by a couple and the lady is from Belarus, so I take the chance to exchange a few words in Russian with her. At night, after dinner, we gather altogether to play Monopoli. It has been ages since I played last time. I had forgotten how fun it is.
One day, while strolling around for the village, we end up at the tourist office. They are advertising a walk in the forest during the night with a biologist specialized in reptiles.
I can’t leave Mindo without doing it. It’s going to be like a night dive, but in the forest.
My travel mates are not enthusiastic at the idea, but I am determined and I’m not going to give up. It’s only when they realise that I’m going to go anyway, with or without them that they join, probably more out of the concern for me than for the sake of a walk in the forest in the middle of the night.
So, we book our excursion and we meet with the guide. He’s a biologist from Canada but moved to Ecuador to study reptiles and amphybia.
« What do you want to see? »
« Snakes » I reply immediately.
It’s going to be difficult but we’ll try.
We start our walk in the nights and… there is so much to see. Nocturne life is amazing and vibrant as day life, maybe even more. There there is a tucano sleeping with its long yellow beak. Then we find some kind of lizards. I never managed to take one in my hands, but he knows how to take them, so he gets one and let us stroke it. There are also some stick insects and leaf insects, which till now I had seen only in the documentaries.
And there are also snakes.
We are pretty lucky as we meet the first one at the very beginning of the walk. It is a false coral snake. It mimics the colors of the coral snake – which is super venomous – but the false coral snake is not dangerous, its defense technique consists of resembling to a dangerous snake to make sure that he is left in peace. But the guide knows how to tell the difference between them, so he takes the snake from the ground and places it in my hands.
It’s an incredible feeling to touch his silky skin and see how he slides among my fingers. I’m not scared at all (there is no reason). I watch my hands while keeping him and all of the sudden I worry I could harm him. I still can’t tell if I am more amazed by the snake itself or by the fact I feel like a snake handler.
« How do we name him? » I ask.
« Leonardo. Like Di Caprio. »
It’s done, we baptize him and then we give him back to the guide, who puts him in a bag as he wants to show him to a class at school – if I remember correctly – so that people start telling the difference between dangerous and not dangerous species, rather than killing everything with no reason. Education for conservation is part of his job.
But tonight it’s snakes night.
We met three other snakes, all of the same species – I don’t remember which one.
But they are all brown and don’t present any specific colorful pattern on their livery.
In the end they are not as striking as Leonardo, so we don’t bother to name any of them.
