Quito, Ecuador is at about 9,000 ft. elevation and if you travel West from there it's all downhill to the Pacific. So, at around 4,500 ft. you start getting into a region know as the Cloud Forests which are very different from the Andean mountains and quite special in many ways.
It is GREEN everywhere you look with lots of water, cable cars instead of roads
and all kinds of surprises like no place for your bus to turn around
and motel rooms surrounded by orchids and hummingbirds.
and motel rooms surrounded by orchids and hummingbirds.
There are lawns that have never been cut, fiddler ferns as big as trees and pretty recycling bins.
There are lots of rivers to ford when the cable cars aren't available, so you just scamper across.
Not being a botanist, all I can do is show you the flowers I could never describe adequately.
I think they kind of liked me though 
because I was wearing green and wasn't picking them.
The colors and shapes were so unique my little camera didn't know what to do with them
The closest I can come to decribing it would be to ask you to imagine your hotel room was inside a commercial greenhouse where exotic birds were spoonfed bananas every morning to wake you.
Some of the plants were hardy while others seemed more delicate than tissue paper.
It's difficult to explain why I felt a kinship to this region, but I just seemed to fit right in.
Joella took to it, as well! She was a regular little monkey doing things she never would have tried before in earlier lives and I was very proud of her accomplishments for that reason especially.
Not everyone can say they've rappelled down waterfalls.
Like I said, there was water everywhere; so at the end of our jungle trek
it seemed like a good idea to get soaked.
If you're a birder, the guides guarantee hundreds of new ones for your book or it's free.
Not that you guys asked...Denny Q. and Bill W.
Mindo is worth visiting for more reasons than I can list and 4 days wasn't enough.
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