A Day of Hummingbirds and an Armadillo

Today January 8, 2023 had a soft start with a sleep in until 7:30. Packed, showered, and was downstairs by 9 where I met Lisa, Rob, and Ann. These poor fellow travellers finally made it to the hotel by about 2am and were justifiably exhausted.

Here are some photos from the hotel room - it was dark when I arrived last night, so was nice to see the environment. I could see cows from the room and I could see the town spreading into the hills.

Breakfast looked really interesting and included lovely looking fruit, humitas and enchilladas.

At 10 we started the approximately 3 hour road trip to Mindo. Mindo is a village in the Andes Mountains of northern Ecuador. It's known for the many bird species, butterflies and orchids found in the surrounding cloud forest, part of the Mindo-Nambillo Reserve. The altitude is 1300 M, so roughly half the altitude between Quito and the sea.

The roads were surprisingly good on the way and we almost immediately were in a cloud forest setting as the road wound around hair pin turns and switch backs. About half way to Mindo we stopped at a local mall for a grocery for some provisions. It's always interesting to see what is available for sale - here I found some cannabis infused chocolate:)

The mall was like any other mall anywhere in the world. I was glad for the stop since I hadn't had breakfast. The most interesting thing was the change - it was a combination of Ecuador coins and US dollar coins.

We continued down to Mindo and the road continued with the tight turns.

Occasionally cars would pass without having full view of the other lane which got rather exciting.

The town of Mindo itself was small and charming with unpaved roads. Las Terrazas de Dana was our hotel where I had a lovely large room and a jacuzzi in the bathroom. Quito is known for its commercial flower growing, especially roses, and below shows some of them.

Las Terrazas de Dana Boutique Lodge & Spa is a family-owned business run by owner David Brito, with a dedicated local staff from Mindo.

Here is our arrival to the hotel.

Immediately we were able to see hummingbirds at the feeder next to the hotel reception.

The grounds had beautiful flowering gardens.

Lunch was wonderful - Lisa and I had Dorado fish and fried yucca. Ann had shrimp

and Rob had steak. Dessert was chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream. There are also a lot of fresh juice options. I had passionfruit juice.

Our plan for the afternoon was to go to the hummingbird garden. This was a really unique experience where the operators gave us sugar cane flowers to attract hummingbirds for a drink right in front of your face. To make things even better, if this is possible, they gave you a red bottle cap filled with sugar water and the hummingbirds sat on your hand and drank. A banana creeper adult and juvenile also came for a drink. Their little feet tickled. Here are a lot of hummingbird pictures and videos.

After this experience which really couldn't be topped, we had a walk through the grounds where we saw an armadillo!

There was also a rodent which looked a bit like an agouti. No turtles were visible, but you could see where they would be in the ponds with water hyasinths. We also saw:

Rusty margined fly catcher

a hole where a Rufous motmot would nest

We also saw some pretty sugar cane flowers and blooming bromiliads.

and a few giant snails

Driving back we had a stop to look at Toucans and saw a black vulture.

As evening approached we heard "screaming" frogs. I don't think we ever found out what kind of frog it was, but it was really loud and sounded like someone screaming. Maybe it was this frog we saw on way back to room after dinner.

Here we are goofing off around the hotel

Here's the dining room and Rob and I drinking

I had a cheese omelet for dinner and was enough as was really stuffed.

I got back to the room at about 8:30 and got ready for bed. I noticed the floor was really wet and thought it was water I tracked in until a drop fell on my head. That caused me to look up and saw an active ceiling leak going on. It was already around 9pm and it was nowhere near the bed, so I didn't want to bother anyone tonight.