Birding from the treetops

Mindo is the Moab of Ecuador's Cloud Forest. As we walked through town on our first afternoon, outfitters advertized ziplines, tubing, cayoneering and a party of four set out on four-wheelers led by a guide on a dirtbike. While the town is small, it hosts an impressive variety of hostels, restaurants and karioke bars.

It is, compared to the surrounding landscape, still largely forested, and this is at the heart of its quieter layer of infrastructure. It was this, its reputation as a birdwatching Mecca that brought us. Our hostel "El Descanso" was a wooden wonder of patios, decks and private rooms all opening to the back yard refuge where ten species of hummingbirds competed for space at the feeders and where tanagers, thrushes and tucans gathered to down bananas that the owner put out each morning and afternoon. We could have spent our two days birding from the porch and developed quite a list, but a few of Mindo's other amenities drew us out.

The truck downshited to ease uphill and around a series of puddles. Its open-sided safari style back was boldly painted, and carried a load of tourists uphill toward the ziplines, cliff jumping and tarabita. It was at this last that we got off. We climbed into the small cable car and eased the 500m across the Canchupi River. On the far side a network of trails brought us through a wooded reserve to a series of waterfalls. On the way we watched tanagers and barbets. M. even watched South America's only species of dipper bob from a rock midstream.

The next morning we ascended the long driveway to the Yellow House, which serves as a gateway to a private forest with about 10km of trails. Here we saw a Chacó araçari, and a wattled guan. We watched an ornate flycatcher hawking for insects. In addition the trails hosted a surprising number of insects - large beetles with yellow or red wings, butterflies with translucent wings and a patch of crimson, and a small brown butterfly with a flash of metalic blue on its forewings. I watched a small lizard scale an aerial root and M. spotted an aguti (he describes it as half capybara, half rabbit) and we marveled as it clipped grass from the trail`s edge and loped off into the undergrowth. When we returned to the Yellow House the hostess met us with glasses of fruit juice and invited us to rest on the porch to watch the hummingbirds.

It was with some reluctance that we boarded the bus the next morning for Quito and began the journey south to Latacunga and Islinivi.