Our second day in Mindo started with a fantastic breakfast at the balcony in our unit. For no additional cost, we could pick whether to have breakfast at the hotel restaurant or have it on our own balcony. We picked to have it on our balcony overlooking the wonderful mountain view. Although the breakfast food was just ok, we loved the view. After breakfast, we went to do canopy ziplining and it turned out to be the best zipline experience we ever had. There were 10 ziplines lasting almost one hour with the longest line over 500m long. We only had Daniel, a German tourist doing a year long journey around the world, in our group and it was super fun. We did single normal run, couple run, bungee style run, swing run, and Yi did upside down Mariposa style run! I did not know my wife is so fearless! We saw a number of orchids on our routes as well a baby toucan on a tree. We yelled so hard that our throats were sore.
 |
| Couple Style |
 |
| Mariposa (Butterfly) Style |
 |
| Our group |
 |
| Our group and two guides |
Next, we went back to the Butterfly Garden and saw numerous butterflies inside. We were allowed to touch our fingers in nectar to attract butterflies to stay on our hand. It is quite amazing how God give such delicate pigments and colors to tiny creatures like butterflies, even their lifespan can be as short as 3 weeks! Outside the butterfly room, they had built observation towers with gigantic bamboo 6-8" in diameter. Unfortunately, we did not see many birds there other than several hummingbirds.
 |
| Butterflies emerging from their cocoons |
We then visited the Orchid Garden which, like many others in this town, is a side business of a hostal. Although it lacks scale, we still saw many unique orchids there, especially the many super tiny ones. We never knew orchids can be so small!
 |
| Orchid so tiny you have to use a magnifying glass! |
 |
| Pitcher Plant |
After dinner, we joined a night walk in the forest. It was quite an experience to see all the nocturnal creatures that we usually do not see in day time. We were picked up by a pickup truck and had to stay at the back of the pick up because it was full inside the cab. After 10 minutes of bumpy ride, we were dropped off at a house and met by Eric who is a Canadian. Eric had moved to Mindo due to his love of outdoor and nature. He owned the big property where we started our walk and he kept pointing out numerous stick insects, frogs, millipedes, spiders, snake, cockroaches, and a very unique moth which can imitate an owl. In our group was a Japanese woman who worked in Argentina. She had great fear of cockroaches but she was determined to touch it tonight to help her overcome this fear! I admire her courage.
 |
| Stick insect |
 |
| This creature looks scary but it won't harm a thing (on Yiling's hand!) |
 |
| Giant cockroach |
 |
| Moth with wings closed |
 |
| Moth with wings opened |
No comments:
Post a Comment