The weekend trip to Mindo was great. After a couple of hours on the bus we arrived in Mindo and left our stuff in the hotel. After lunch we walked for half an hour to a river to go tubing. With all our tubes roped together we bobbed down the river. At first it was quite fast and wild because it had rained, but it was great fun. In the evening we listened to the night chorus of frogs echoing through the cloud forest.
The next day was even better. After breakfast we set off on a 3 hour hike through the cloud forest to a place where we caught a “chiva” which is a type of open sided bus. This took us to another track which led to a place where we did “canopy,” flying down 500 metres of steel cable suspended 200 meters in the air, with a great rush of adrenalin. From there we hiked on to a big waterfall where we jumped into the river to swim for a while and rest on the riverbank. Afterwards we returned to the hotel to grab our things before heading back to Quito, tired but happy.




