Mindo is a small tourist town about two hours on a local bus from Quito.

We Ubered it from the hostel to Terminal Del La Ofelia to catch the Flor del Valle bus with a mix of locals and other backpackers (we are now seeing heaps). Given the warnings we have had about putting your bag under the bus (and the fact we only had a half packed bag with us) we decided to keep it on our lap for the trip. Not the most comfortable thing in the world.

Anyway, I have read that the trip to Mindo crosses the equator four times between leaving Quito and getting to Mindo. Very exciting and we got to see the Mitad del Mundo (centre of the world) monument through the bus window. The bus ride wound through mountains and cloud before dropping to a sensible 1250m above sea Ievel.

We arrived to a warm afternoon and found our hostel (bungalows) very easily.

One of the things that attracted me to that particular hostel was that it served breakfast, and to top breakfast off, there were humming bird feeders in the trees, so you could watch the humming birds squabbling over the feeders (there were enough if they shared nicely) whilst eating.

The town is quite tiny and is basically just restaurants, tourist agencies and mini-markets. It also felt safe. It was lovely to wander round and not worry.

We decided to do zip-lining, walking to waterfalls, a butterfly farm and a bird watching tour.

Zip-lining was up first and we were with a family from the US (well the dad was a Mancunian) they had three kids under 10 with them. There were 10 lines all up and it was great fun! We got pretty good weather for the zip-lining.

It was then a 4km walk up hill to the Tarabita ride across to the waterfall walk.

A Tarabita is a sort of open air fast, simple chair lift. An open air cage on a zip line powered by a car motor (it sounded like).

By the time we got to the Tarabita the weather had turned and it was pissing down. We waited with some French girls we met on the walk up for the rain to ease off, but as it didn't particularly we just put our rain macs on and went for it.

We decided to do the 2.5 hr round trip to the 50m high waterfall, called Cascada Reina (Queen Waterfall). It wasn't worth it.

It pissed it down all the way there and back, and to make it particularly lovely, because it was warm, the condensation meant that the rain coat was almost as wet on the outside as inside. Thankfully though my shoes weren't too wet by the end. Luke had waterproof shoes.

By the end of that walk, sense of humour well and truly left at the zip-line, we shared a "taxi" (I think it was the Tarabita controller's mate, but cost the same as a proper taxi) back into town with a different French couple (lots of French here) who turned out to be staying in the same place as us.

Next morning it was up and out at 6am for the bird watching tour.

Our guide had a big scope and a good set of binoculars for us to use (we had some little ones, which weren't horrible) and for the next 3.5 hours she looked for birds for us.

Mindo is one of the premier bird watching spots in Ecuador with over 500 bird species calling it home. We both like to see interesting birds, but 3.5 hours was about our limit. Especially that early in the morning.

We did however get to see quite a few tanagers, lots of little birds, a squirrel cuckoo and most excitingly three types of Toucans (out of the four) found in the region.

The best thing about going with the guide was she had a massive scope and was an expert at taking photos through the scope with my phone. It meant that we got amazing close up photo's of the Toucans.

After that it was lunch, a trip to the butterfly farm and back to Quito.

It was a lovely break, and I think we might be in a low tourist season as the buses weren't full and we didn't have to wait anywhere for service or activity. Opposingly it has kind of hard to choose somewhere to eat as in a lot of cases you would be the only ones in there.

We did have an amusing experience when looking for dinner, we eventually decided to go to a crepe place we had seen the night before, we were the only ones there... to start with. Over the course of our meal another three couples arrived. It is always the way, it is always easier to choose somewhere to eat when other people are there. Harder being the first. We felt like we deserved a discount for bringing in everyone else!

Anyway, after another bus and easy Uber ride, we were back in our Quito hostel, and getting ready for our next trip out of Quito. We are back in Quito again before our Amazon trip and then again before our Galapagos trip... didn't plan it too well.