pathless through the wild

Hostería Mariposas de Mindo in the northern part of Ecuador doesn’t exist in the real world. Here your five senses refuse to work together each transforming into selfish creatures with their own desires. Sight forces your eyes to dart from ground to canopy attempting to capture every insect, plant, and animal that has never graced your presence before. Your taste buds whisper seductively in your ear to try just one vivid berry, something that beautiful can’t be poisonous, right? Hearing reaches out its greedy palms, trying to catch the rapid Spanish which has grown wings in order to keep the urgent hum of beating feathers company in their mad dash past your eardrums. Smell becomes a hoarder, stealing the freshness after a rainstorm and the damp warm earth for its collection. Touch jerks your hand outward to caress every hairy plant, it drives your head under the waterfall sending a lighting shock of cold through your body, and it tangles your feet to feel the cool living earth under your now scrapped palms. It is touch who always wins this battle, because even if all other senses were to take leave it is impossible to stand in this place and not feel life swirling around your steady form. There is no way this chaotic energy can exist in the same world where dogs wear sweaters and something known as “Toddlers in Tiaras” survives, my brain can’t comprehend it thus I refuse to believe it. Or maybe I have it backwards and I have finally found the real world.