MINDO

Departed from Quito for a few days to the Cloud Forest (Jungle) on the other side of the equator. This place was really cool and famous for being the 2nd top notch bird watching place in the world! And for us bird enthusiasts, we jumped at the chance to get into some serious bird watching action. Up at 5...walking for 6 hours.....committed and surprisingly good. Saw some pretty cool birds. Stayed at a really cool hostel with a great family. Stayed in their attic with massive windows over looking the jungle. Possibly our best jungle experience so far.

Us surveying the area......only the best, first rate equipment for real bird watchers! Our guide Marcelo (who owned our hostel) was amazing at spotting the birds. We soon got the nack of it and spotted them ourselves.

This is a bird, a Toucan...... We also saw a very rare Equatorian one, this was really something special. Even better than that.... we managed to catch a glimpse of a ´Cock on the Rock´! Too quick to catch a photo though. Shame.

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Yes, this is a woodpecker. We saw a grand total of 5 types that day, a first for us avid bird watchers and a record total for our guide Marcelo. Actually, Marcelo mimicked the birds song calling this one over to us so we could take photos of it. Pretty impressive really.

On our watching extravaganza...we caught this cable car thing over a gorge 120mtrs above the jungle. Then we hiked a bit to a waterfall to jump off. Freezing water but fun.

With freezing water in mind...the next day we decided to spend an hour in it tubing. It was a grade 2 river so it was preeettty full on as you can see in this photo! Wow, what a ride. We did have a Mute instructor which was pretty interesting.