Mindo Ecuador Waterfall Tour Adventure

Water rushes over our hiking path in Mindo, Ecuador. I try to cross without using my hands!

All the Quiteños know Mindo. They venture to this cloud forest town for adventures in nature. 

The editors of Lonely Planet don’t mention Mindo in their guidebooks, yet.

Iona and I stay at La Casa de Cecilia. This is our ground floor room.

Once they do - once the town has a few ATMs, once there are a few places where it is possible to pay with a credit card - foreign tourists will storm it.

In order to visit, one must budget and bring cash.

Rather than made a reservation with one of the two or three sterile resorts that take them, it is best to set aside money for each day and stick to your limit. Follow your fellow tourists and join with them to collect discounts on common lodgings and activities. 

View of downtown Mindo from the back of our waterfall tour "taxi."

Iona and I take a three hour bus ride from Quito’s Ofelia bus station to Mindo.

As our driver ascends the switchbacks and the air begins to get  thinner, mists roll in over the craggy, bromeliad and vine covered mountains.

 Nature along the trail (clockwise from upper left): Morphos butterfly. A photogenic relative of the violet. A bromeliad sprouts up from a few slivers of rotten wood. 

We arrive and find an English speaking tour operator across the street from the bus station. Other tourists arrange for a waterfall tour with us. Negotiating a group rate saves us $4 each.

With Nambillo Falls as our final destination, we hike past seven smaller, equally spectacular waterfalls.

One of our Australian friends takes a solo dip in this lovely cascade.

Our entire party gets wet here. Iona and her friend are the last ones out from under the falls.

While everyone enjoys splashing in a waterfall, far tumbling water feels deeper in significance for me.

These dramatic drops evidence the relative youth of the planet. Where water has time to do its work, mountains are brought down to the size of hills. Meandering brooks through a meadow are sometimes the only evidence that water was responsible.

Don't forget to use water tablets if you fill your canteen from these springs!

Iona backs me up as I hug a mossy tree.

Waterfalls demonstrate for how water connects all life. Once most of the planet was like the cloud forest: humid, dense with vines, difficult to navigate. Then the clouds came to earth in the form of water. 

One of a number wood slat and cable bridges on the trail. 

It was water that brought humankind to land and, with its kinetic force, water made a rough landscape habitable for humankind.

We leave Mindo grateful for - and in awe of - water.

Mindo, Ecuador Bird Watching Adventure

A kingfisher in Mindo, Ecuador

The ground is colder than the air. There are long pauses between cricket hisses and frog groans. The cloud forest is waking up.

The van is late leaving and our group will have to hike fast if we are going to catch a glimpse of the elusive Andean cock-of-the-rock.

We find the way to the lookout shelter in the dark using phone lights and the red-eye polarizers on our cameras.

The pre-dawn path to the birding shelter has us knee deep in mud!

Julia Patino, our guide, teases us, “Didn’t anyone tell you to bring your torches?”

For a half-hour we trudge through mud and then we wait.

The Andean cock-of-the-rock is shy, rarely perched “in the open.” If we are lucky we will see a hint of bright red plumage.

Patino initiates some bird calls, then names the birds that respond. This technique is called pishing.  Her calls are remarkably effective.

She sets up a sight for us, predicting where the birds will land and how they will move or react next.

Over the course of three hours, we see parrots, toucans, and a broad variety of taningers. We see velvet coronets, and rufous motmots, and a golden headed quetzal.

And we see our Andean cock-of-the-rock. Three of them, in fact!

Birding is big business in Ecuador. In the tourist town of Mindo alone there are three full time birding operations featuring multiple guides with gaggles of letters behind their names.

Julia is independent and has been working in the region for over a decade. She knows all the sweet spots:  not just in the sanctuaries, but on random hillsides and highways.

Our group sitting down after birding to relax and share impressions.

When we break for an early lunch, I’ve improved my life list by nearly 30 species. 

Now that’s what I call a Big Day!