Mindo - Zip lining, Chocolate factory and a search for Toucans!

This weekend Kibby and I left Friday afternoon for the town of Mindo. Located 2 hours by bus outside of Quito in a cloud forest, Mindo is a great way to quickly escape the bustle of Quito and join a small, tourist friendly, slightly hippy town with tons to do.

Here is the main drag of Mindo.

So what is a cloud forest? I had the same question. According to wikipedia it is a tropical or sub-tropical moist forest characterized by persistent low level cloud cover usually at the canopy level. I tried multiple times to adequately capture the cloud forest but I don't feel like any of the pictures did it justice. But here are a few attempts.

We arrived and found a hostel that was very cute and homey and run by a family. We had met some other travelers on the bus so we ate and hung out with them the first night and the rest of the weekend. The second day we went on a walk into the forest and then went on a terabitha across a canyon that led to a hike that led to 7 waterfalls.

Then we went zip lining which was super fun. We got to fly through the cloud forest and try different positions on the zipline.

Regular zip lining.

Nina doing the Superman

Kibby doing the Mariposa (upside down) with our cute as a button 14 year old guide. Haha!

Then we took a tour of the chocolate factory in Mindo. It was very interesting to see how chocolate is made. Most of the chocolate that they produce in and around Mindo is made into nibs and sold to other countries for processing. They do make some bars in Mindo but only for the tourists. Here are a whole bunch of cacao beans drying.

Here are the nibs ready for shipment

Last but not least we got to try some of the chocolate products. Unsweetened chocolate with sugar and ginger syrup or crushed red peppers. They also had some chocolate bar-b-q sauce to try.

The next day we woke up at the crack of dawn to go bird watching! The dad of the family who owned the hostel we were staying at, Marcelo, is a bird watcher and he is so good at what he does! The fact that he can find these tiny birds in trees hundreds of feet away is pretty amazing. He can also imitate many bird calls which he used to lure birds closer. For any bird watchers out there, here is a list of all the birds we saw:
* White-winged tanager
* Pootoo
* Grey motmot
* Cattle Egret
* Golden tanager
* Ornate Flycatcher
* Swallow tailed kite
* Squirrel cuckoo
* Tropical Kim bird
* Yellow Rumped Tanager
* Cinnamon Becard
* Crimson Rumped Toucanet
* Yellow-Bellied Seed-Eater
* White-Shouldered Tanager
* Spotted Woodcreeper
* Red Headed Barbet
* Slated-Cap Flycatcher
* Black Headed Vulture
* Double-Toothed (or toed) Kite
* Blue Necked Tanager
* Red Bearded Parrot
* Choco Toucan
* Pale Mandible Aracari Toucan (endemic)
* Plumbeous Pigeon
* Golden-Crowned Flycatcher
* Golden-Olive Woodpecker
* Golden Headed Quetzal
* Blue-Grey Tanager
* Rufous Motmot

I was able to take some pictures using Marcelo's super-zoom-scope (this is the official name). This is the black headed vulture which I thought of as bird watching 101 because even I could see this bird with my naked eye in the tree and it didn't move very much so he was easy to take pictures of and re-locate with the binoculars.

We saw 4 different kinds of toucans including this Choco Toucan. Isn't he a pretty guy?

This is the Golden Headed Quetzal. Very bright and beautiful.

And this is a type of Motmot.

Burgeoning bird watchers!