Mindo Part III - The Tarabita and yummy foodstuffs

For our last couple of days in Mindo, we moved to the Cabañas Armonía y Jardín de Orquídeas in town. It had its positives, like getting to see cool tropical birds munching on bananas right next to our breakfast area, but it was a step down from Mindo Gardens, as I think all accommodations in town likely would be. However, this gave us time to explore the town and sample a variety of foods.

 Our favorites were a dive on the main street called El Tigrillo (pizza and traditional Ecuadorian - crazy cheap - like $2 a person for a full size meal) and a fancier place up the hill called El Quetzal (the chocolate restaurant).









 While in town, we also spent one evening at a 'Frog Concert' at the Mindo Lago. You arrive in the early evening and sit and listen to many different frogs as they sing for each other. It was very 'rain forest cd' esque :) After the concert, we went on a night hike through the rest of the resort, which appeared to be (creepily) deserted. To add to the creepy, there are most definitely all the bugs and what not that your imagination could come up with out in the tropical forest at night. It was really cool, but some of those insects are burned into my memory permanently.

The last, but definitely not least part of our Mindo adventure was the ride on the Tarabita. This is a steel cage suspended from a cable that runs across a canyon of cloud forest. No safely belts, no lid - all sorts of adrenaline :) The other side of the canyon is a seven waterfall hike, and we didn't want to miss that.

Of course as this is a well known thing in Mindo, we had read a lot about it before we came - even watching youtube videos of the trip across. When we finally rode it (after several preemptive safety talks), it was awesome! Just flying along - and over to the other side in just a few minutes. We took our own video below.

We got off, and headed down the trail. Interestingly, the way the hike goes is first, you go down to the bottom of the first waterfall, and then basically hike to the top of it where a little ways away would be the base of the next waterfall. It was the hike of a lifetime - one I will never forget :)

Of course, nothing that we do would be without some type of craziness - and the craziness of this particular hike was that Noah fell into the river - hence the one picture below of a shirtless glowing child :) As it is, the water and the air were warm so it wasn't as big of a deal as it could have been.

Enjoy the pictures!