As a bit of a respite from the city of Quito we headed to a little town called Mindo situated in the pristine Bosque Protector Mindo-Nambillo tropical cloudforest for a spot of bird watching and adventure. After a brief visit to view a room in a not very pleasant house (in which resided 7 dogs) we found a room in a lovely hostel called the Birdwatchers House. True to it's name, there lived a birdwatcher who displayed fantasic colourful photos of the local birds throughout. The hostel included a bird garden where in the morning and afternoon there was a frenzy of hummingbirds fluttering about the bird tables. It was amazing, if only we had a decent camera to take some 'in flight' pictures.
Humming birds in the garden of Birdwatchers house
Unfortunatley, the evening was wiped out by the daily rain storm but we booked ourselves a tubing trip down the Mindo River and Zip-lining for the very next day.
We caught a lift with the agency to the start of the tubing spot, not quite knowing quite what to expect. Turns out we were in a group of 4 and the 'tubing' was 6 tractor inner tubes tied together with two guides literally running us down the river. It was such good fun hurtling down the 3km stretch of river in the tropical sunshine, even when Ryan's tube burst we couldn't stop laughing! Well worth the $6 we paid for it.
After the action, tubes in the background...
Next stop, approx 2km walk up the hill was Mindo Canopy Adventure for the zip lining. There was 13 different lines which were arranged into a sort of assault course with a spot of walking though the cloudforest inbetween. The lines ranged from 20-400m in length and upto 250m off the valley bottom. Although I have no problem with heights, a was pretty aprehensive about flying unassisted for such long distances. Safe to say after whizzing down the first 350m line I got well into the swing of things, although not as much a Ryan flying upside down and in the superman pose.
After a morning of adventure, we continued up the hill through the cloudforest in search of the cable car which would carry us across the river bottom. Not sure if we didn't walk far enough of was on completely the wrong road but we never found it and turned back to the town. The heavens opened for the daily downpour and we hitched a lift with a friendly local to sit out the rain in our hostel.
A couple of 'action' shots
After the previous day of adventure we had quite a tame morning by visiting the local butterfly farm 'Mariposa de Mindo'. When we arrived it was full with the blue rinse briggade that had just jumped off the latest tour bus. We nearly didn't enter but after the 45min walk in the sun it would have been silly to have turned back. We were glad we didn't and after a brief introduction by the butterfly boffin (curator come guide) about the different phases of a butterfly's life we turned into butterfly spotters for the next half hour.
A couple of piccies of the beautiful species...
The one below has an eye on it's back to trick it's predators into thinking it's a snake
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