Mindo, Ecuador
January 2026 retrospective: A trip of a lifetime
If I could recommend only one destination to lovers of colors and light and avian excitement, it would be Mindo, Ecuador. Our trip was pretty much perfect, so I thought I’d give you a rundown of everything we did.
Our adventure began at an airport hotel…which doubles as an alpaca farm. Our Airbnb host in Mindo recommended against being on the roads at night, so we opted for the hotel’s airport pickup, fell asleep, and woke bright and early to foggy beauty.
For our first real day in Ecuador, I’d chosen the less-traveled route to get to Mindo itself. Rather than paying for a private transfer, we doubled our payment and enjoyed an all-day, private guided ebike ride.
We were driven up to the ridge west of Quito, then it was so amazing to watch the plants and animals change as we worked our way down from the upper montane forest at 11,000 feet to the cloud forest at 5,000 feet. On the map below, note that the beginning is on the bottom of the page (south side).
It was harder than expected to pedal on the few uphill areas, partially because neither of us fully understood the bike’s assist function but mostly because the elevation just made any exertion untenable. Our tour involved a backup van in case we needed to bail, but we decided to stick it out even when it began to pour.
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that our guide was the best one I’ve ever had. Definitely recommended!
Day one’s grand finale (if you don’t count the dropoff at our Airbnb) was eating a late lunch while watching the astonishing diversity of wildlife at the feeders at Alambi Reserve. There are multiple places in and near Mindo where you can enjoy a similar experience and I’m lukewarm about birdfeeding so this is the only one we tried out. But the simplicity of it definitely hit the spot after six hours on bikes!
I wasn’t at the point of wanting to ID any longer by the time we got to Alambi. Instead, I just marveled at the colors and patterns of the birds flitting all around.
Of course, I did go back and obsessively upload each one to iNaturalist so I could decipher the beauty later, but that was…
…on the porch of our Airbnb.
While many parts of the trip were exciting, the place I go back to most often in my mind is the elevated Airbnb porch, inches from epiphytes and overlapping a wood-walled horse pasture. I spent hours sitting there, watching birds flit through the canopy, often as rain fell.
Due to the equatorial location, that was enough light even on drizzling days for good shots. The colors at midwinter were a perfect antidote to the Ohio gray I’d left behind.
In addition to sitting on the porch, on day two we followed our host’s instructions to walk to a nearby “private” waterfall. From the multiple black pipes running up the trail, it was apparent that this was actually a neighborhood water supply. But we didn’t see anyone else and had a blast enjoying the glasswing butterflies, the amazing climbing plants, and the waterfall itself.
To find the secret spot on your own, follow a “grass path” — wide and road-like but with pasture-like grasses, shown on Google Maps as going past Magic Elf Glamping. You’ll walk east out of Mindo until the wide path hits its end, then turn left on a smaller path. The waterfall is near 0°03’47.6”S 78°45’32.2”W.
We did completely soaked our footwear on the many stream crossings. Given the wet weather, my boots didn’t dry for days. Pro tip: bring multiple pairs of shoes!
All on her own, my sister found another magical place (0°03’32.8”S 78°45’40.0”W) within easy walking distance a couple of days later. (Yes, I am jumping ahead here — deal with it.)
She promised me toucans and quetzals and guans and I said, “No way they’ll still be there tomorrow!”
Except for the quetzal, all birds were still present and accounted for (plus a trogon and some other beauties joined the show). Big sisters are always right…
Things I don’t regret but that weren’t top of my list:
The Night Tour: Keep in mind that I’m terrible at night, and I also am not a big fan of group activities. I do enjoy how night tours expand my understanding of a place, so I keep doing them (hoping for a repeat of that amazing night tour in Australia where we saw flying foxes). My socks weren’t knocked off this time, but there were a lot of cool frogs.
Tarabita Mindo a las Cascas: Again, caveats include the fact that I was coming down with what turned out to be a terrible head cold that ate up a day and a half of our trip. But this attraction draws tourists from Quito on the weekend and we accidentally visited on a weekend.
To cut a long story short, there were just a lot of people around, which lowered the awe factor for me. The cable-car ride was pretty darn cool though!
Other recommendations:
Grab a copy of Wildlife of Ecuador to dream before the trip and to understand the larger-scale ecological factors at play. While actually in Ecuador, I relied on apps (Merlin and iNaturalist), but my app-less sister thoroughly enjoyed having the field guide on hand the entire time, even though it only had a small fraction of local species in it.
Plan outings in advance if you want to hire a driver. Our Airbnb host very kindly hooked us up with two local drivers, but it turned out not to be realistic to expect them to drop everything and show up within a few hours. They were, however, excellent about being asked to come back at a certain time to pick us up from trailheads or town.
Expect the bird-obsessed. People come to Mindo for birds, so don’t be surprised if a driver you hired to simply transport you from point A to point B hears a flock of toucans, slams on the brakes, then as you’re all standing in the middle of the road staring up, another car approaches…and also slams on their brakes so everyone in their vehicle can also pile out and enjoy the show.
Try the local fruit. Some of it was weird, but all of the fruits I’d heard of (mangos, papayas, pineapple) were ten times as delicious as the ones imported to the States. And one of the “weird” fruits (yellow dragonfruit, pictured above) was kiwi-like and delectable!
Don’t expect a lot of mammals. The only mammal we saw outside of the night tour was a resident pair of Agoutis. I didn’t see a single reptile either. But frog and insect diversity was very high.
If the local hummingbird pair chases everyone else away from your porch’s feeder, let him fly into the house and get stuck then watch what happens. (I mean, ethically, I don’t recommend doing this on purpose. But when the floodgates of porch diversity opened before I realized where our resident Rufous-tailed was located, the effect was astounding.)
New species on my iNaturalist life list: 82
New continent on my life list: 1 (!!!)
Surprising similarities: Many plant families were ones I remembered being introduced to in Monteverde, Costa Rica. Apparently, from a floral standpoint, Central America is mostly part of South America.
Time in Ecuador: 7 days and 6 nights (of which I spent about a day and a half flat on the couch on the porch fighting off a cold)
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