**** Not much food in this one…..but there’s a very unique experience you might enjoy!
As I mentioned in my last post on Ecuador; because I wanted a bit of a buffer in case something happened, we had almost a full day in Quito on our return. Since we were staying at a hotel located at Mariscal Sucre International Airport, I went and booked us a private tour of the Mindo Cloud Forest. You can read this Wikipedia page in case you want to know what a cloud forest is.
We had a quick breakfast at the hotel before waiting for our driver.
We’d be making several stops during the day; so we did the check out thing at the hotel and stored our luggage and were off. Our guide/driver quickly informed us that the difference between a cloud forest and a rain forest is that cloud forests are at altitude and the plant life depends on an almost constant mist/condensation/dripping to keep vegetation watered.
The drive to Mindo takes a bit over an hour from Quito. And our first stop was at the side of the road where there stood a welcome center, a small mini mart, and parking lot.
Across the street was El Pahuma Orchid Reserve.
A lovely, easy trail.
Of course there were some beautiful, almost tropical plants.
And we even had our own “trail master”.
Who guided us to the lovely waterfall.
The indigenous inhabitants of the area; the Yumbo considered waterfalls and ponds to be sacred.
In fact, they still hold various sacred ceremonies here during the year! The trail almost looks like it was dug into the earth like a trench. We were told that they call this a “culunco”, a trail dug into the ground by centuries of use!
This was a wonderful start to our tour. And our next stop is one that we’ll never forget. After about a 45 minute drive, we headed down a short road to a small parking lot. Which had a wonderful view!
This is San Tadeo Birding, a well known spot for bird watching…..
But is know for one other thing……we were given some coffee and walked around a bit, with our guide pointing out the various birds occupying the vegetation.
We were then walked to a little clearing and handed these little red hand feeders and instructed on where and how to stand…completely still, with feeder in hand. And then it started to happen!
The hummingbirds started coming over to feed on the sugar water!
It was an amazing experience…one that we wished never ended!
Different species of hummingbirds were pointed out to us.
I asked how these wild hummingbirds got trained to do this….our guide laughed and said the training goes both ways…for the human and for the birds. Hummingbirds are drawn to the color red, so things are done with stationary or hanging feeders first.
Then the birds are slowly transitioned to feeding from feeders in people’s hands. We were told that the place was closed to visitors during Covid and during that time, they got used to feeding from the staffs hands. And it’s now been 2 generations since then….so it seems that the info has been passed down!
It’s moments like these that makes these trips exploring our wonderful planet so wonderfully inforgettable!
Thanks for stopping by!