Ecuador #5: Mindo (Amazon Rainforest)

Day 1: Chocolate Tour/ Frog Concert

We arrived in Mindo at about 3:20 or so on Friday after a gorgeous 2 hour drive there. The road was winding but it was beautifully coated with trees and gorgeous cliffs. We went to the small tourist office first and decided what all we wanted to do and picked several activities for our time there. 

This is on the drive in,  taken from a moving car... Can you saw GORGEOUS!?

Once we got there:

The first thing we did was a chocolate tour of a small company: 

The tour started with a brief explanation of how cocoa is baked/smashed/mixed into what we know as a chocolate bar. 

This bean mixer had a funny train shaped face to it. 

Step 1- crush dried cocoa beans

Step 3: Crush to chocolate powder

Step 4: Mix cocoa powder with some cocoa butter to create a solid block of baking chocolate

Then we took a tour around the crops and kitchen to see how exactly it was done. 

Drying cocoa beans and baby spice peppers for flavor 

Sugar cane for sweetening 

After all that work, here is the final product! 

The next thing we did was the Frog Concert where we toured a hosteria's 2 acre land for animals with a flash light. No pictures because it was so dark, but I loved it! Nature is so cool and we managed to be there on the 2 days a year that a certain orange eyed bug graces the rain forest with it's presence. 

Day 2: 
We did loads our second day in Mindo. We started early with an 8 am trip to the butterfly garden in Hosteria Mariposa. We were told the butterflies would be most active in the AM. It was WONDERFUL. The garden was pretty small, but we stayed in there for nearly an hour, taking pictures and browsing around the flowers covered in butterflies. The large grey/spotted ones let you hold them and have a gorgeous blue outer wing (shown below). Here are some of my pics.

Chrysalis net. We saw some butterflies hatching as we watched. Took only a few seconds for them to pop out. 

New eye

One landed on Jared's foot :D

So pretty.. nature rocks. 

One of my favorite images- that blue shine on one and the orange on the other just makes the leaf look pathetic. 

The next thing we did was hiking to a waterfall and swimming in it. Little did we know that to get to the other side of the gorge, you had to take a little cable car 300-400 feet above the air in a sketchy little contraption. It only took about 45 seconds but it was riveting.

Mom's face... Lindsey's face. I was left to stand with no seat, so imagine my face. 

River + Me =Smile. 

It really was a great hike.

We went swimming on the way back- it was pretty dang chilly.

Aaaaaand, can't post a blog without a duck face, right?

So then we hiked back up to the awesome trolley thing and went back on over to the other side to begin more fun:

Next: Ziplining over canopies :)
Now obviously I don't have a ton of photos because I was in the air and all... but here is what I have. It was a blast (even though I got eaten alive by mosquitos and still have the scars to prove it).

I'm ready... ;)

We're ready

I think this is about half way through :)

WOOOO

This was one of the funnest weekends I've ever had in my life and will probably never forget it :) Loveeee my family. P.S. this country is just gorgeous.