Mindo

Had a great weekend in Mindo, I travelled with three other girls from my language school, we stayed in a cute little hostel with hammocks and hummingbird feeders on the balconies. Mindo is in the rainforest so was very hot and humid, very different to Quito although we were only two hours away. We were up at the crack of sparrows to go bird watching with our guide Marcelo, he imitated the bird calls although he admitted to only being able to do one variety of toucan..! The others he had on his ipod and he would play it to the birds to get them to come closer. We saw fabulous toucans and loads of other weird and wonderfully coloured species plus a very rare crested turkey which the guide was really excited about and seemed disappointed that we didn´t quite share his enthusiasm!

The butterfly farm was another highlight but the best bit had to be the zip lining through the cloud forest. Suspended hundreds of feet above the forest floor we zipped across on wires from platform to platform, over waterfalls, sometimes hanging updside down and (my favourite) suspended from the back of the harness face down so it feels like you´re flying! This one was called the Superman but we renamed it to Supergirl (or Supachica in Spanish!).