An Open Letter to the People of Mindo, Pichincha, Ecuador

Thank you.

Thank you for hosting us. Thank you for all of your kindness and patience. Thank you for the laughs and smiles. Thank you for all the information you gave freely, especially when you had to give it twice or wait for the google translate to help us understand.

Thank you for sharing your beautiful town with us. Thank you for the work you put into your town. Thank you for the murals and statues. Thank you for the clean park and the kind workers who maintain it.

Thank you for the love you have for the world we live in. Thank you for improving your town and maintaining it’s existing beauty. Thank you for the extensions of the small town out into the cloud forest. The nature preserves and tourist attractions show how much you love the small part of the world in which you live.

Thank you to the kind pharmacy for the medications, foot powder, ibuprofen, aloe wipes, antacid, and patience as we fumbled through describing our needs.

Thank you to the street vendors for tying our bracelets, and getting down items for us to try on. Thank you for answering our questions about your crafts; stones in the jewelry, fabric in the blankets and sweaters, how you make your items. Thank you for telling us about yourselves. And thank you for asking about us. Thank you for your patience in translation.

Thank you to all the restaurants. We were always served with kindness and patience. Every question we had was answered, even when we both had our phones out to translate the back and forth. We were up for trying anything and everything, and you delivered time and again. I’m not sure I could count how many new things I tried on account of your willingness to stand by my table while I looked up words on the menus that I did not know.

And thank you for the delicious food. We ate our way through Mindo on the streets, in the cafes, in the mom and pop shops, all the way to the nicest restaurants in town. We dined in a group of two, all the way to a group of 20. We never once had a rude server.

Thank you to all the mini-markets, bakeries, and coffee shops. Every store was clean and we maintained. As we browsed about, looking a new and different things, if we saw a worker and asked a question, we were always answered with ease and kindness. We must have been to almost every mini-market they have in Mindo. Some days we were after lunch for the day. Other times we were just browsing to see how they package food, or look at different things. We dottled