welcome back to our channel i'm stephen she's andie and today
he's on my finger snakes here
oh it smells so good in here in our last episode we kicked off our ecuador series in the capital
city of quito now we're in mindo a nature lover's paradise to do a lot of hiking i was not cut out
for that and see how some of the world's best chocolate is made oh that's good that's amazing
if you're new to the channel welcome we're stephen and andie caffeinated travelers of the u.s.
and beyond when our lives changed completely in 2020 we decided it was our sign to spend as much
time as possible enjoying what meant mindo is one of our favorite stops the last time we came
to ecuador it's a cloud forest which we had never even heard of before that it's lower in
elevation than quito is which makes it warmer and that's pretty nice but it's also a lot more humid
so if you're gonna make the trip from keto be aware that it's about a two
a little more than two hour drive and it gets very bumpy and curvy um i needed
to lay down for a short while because i was feeling it so if you like me or from
motion sickness you're going to want to take some dramamine or bonine or something whatever
your motion sickness aid of choice is before you make this trip i'm regretting that i didn't
so we took a small group tour here there are about eight people on the bus
our tour guide speaks english so we're getting everything in english
it's a little bit easier for us since our spanish is not very good and right now we
just stopped at a place where we can see a lot of beautiful birds especially hummingbirds
i'm trying to photograph a toucan oh there he is you really need the zoom to see him
oh he's on my finger you should feel the power of their wings the wind coming off them
sounds like an airplane i know they sound so cool right
look at that too it's beautiful never seen a long-tailed hummingbird before
let's see your tail oh look at that looks so cool all right we're at a butterfly
farm in mindo now and we're about to go get swarmed let's go take a look
samia
we are hiking up a short ways now to go ziplining
i am so excited about this this was our first trip together as we mentioned in our previous vlog
and stephen's afraid of heights so when i found out there was a
zip lining here i wasn't sure i could get him to go with me
but he did it and we had so much fun so we were super excited to get the
chance to come back here do this again and this time have a vlog of it to remember it
ready for our first one we're doing seven in total
and check it out here here's the line and i can't even see where it ends right through those trees
not a cute view
oh my gosh it's beautiful oh that was great
and here comes stephen get back because that is a fast stop
i don't know if i'm gonna do that one no normal regular just normal
okay i'll try why not oh my gosh i'm gonna do it i mean you only live once right and this
might be it for me i mean you know that's crazy just when i was feeling confident upside down
and your knees um
is my hat gonna fall off no okay open your hands
okay
i don't know how i get up
this is a short one but we get to go tandem so this will be fun
because we've never done this before yeah let's go
okay
that was a surprise
okay no snake sighting so far oh
didn't you just tell me to watch my head i just hit my head we're earning our lunch
oh yeah and dessert it's so pretty up here though it's beautiful here i go
she's so crazy
no trip to mindo is complete without seeing the waterfall
getting steeper
i gotta go into sport mode
i've been watching okay stephen's been on it so
look at that one
that feels nice don't fall
this is
we expected waterfalls i didn't expect to be waiting in a freezing cold pool pretty excited
wow that's gorgeous
i'm dying here i was not built for this i mean it's beautiful but wow
this hike is supposed to take us to five waterfalls but i don't know if you can see
i am dripping with sweat here i was not cut out for this and we have to go all the way
back most of it is uphill going back that is the trail
that goes up to the next waterfall no thank you this is a lot we've decided to stay here
at number four let the rest of the gang go on to number five although a few of
them are also staying here with us and uh then we're all gonna make the trek all the way back
and then i think there's lunch at the end of this so i am looking forward to that
feels impossible
it's the juice oh but you can try the actual fruits
all right let's try this with some salt
it's better
it's really good though
we got corn carrots corn carrots herbs it looks like cilantro probably
you can taste the sweet corn with all the seasonings too really good lunch was included
with the tour and of course we went with the vegetarian option so we got this beautiful salad
and we've got some rice up here it's really nice
there's a tattoo shop can i go get a hummingbird tattoo
that would be pretty butterfly i like the hummingbirds better
chocolate tour time
so when we booked this trip one of the things we told angelica terra sur was that we wanted to see
either chocolate or coffee production because we know that ecuador has fabulous of both of those so
she set us up with this tour of mindo because it includes a tour of a chocolate company and
we are so excited to try it they just took our order for some hot chocolate so we're going to
be getting that first and then i think we're gonna see actually how the chocolate is made
ok i'm
gonna try a nib
i was expecting it to be a little more bitter
oh yeah that's where the good stuff is
we get to try some brownie and some fruit and
i think we get to try a bunch of varieties of chocolate too
i immediately taste the coffee just breathing it
that's amazing but yeah it just kind of melts in your mouth though it's got a great texture to it
oh that's good also immediately you taste it just breathing yeah that's amazing
i have hopped up on chocolate now but of course we bought a bunch to take home too
because it would be just wrong not to right
so this is a little bit of an adventure huh little bit we've been sitting here with traffic
completely stopped for several minutes we weren't sure if it was a landslide or an
accident but i think the prevailing thought is that it's a landslide it seems like it so i have
no idea how long we're gonna be here we're heading back to quito hopefully i don't know we might
turn around and head back to mindo which would be amazing because we had so much fun there what was
your favorite thing today um i think the chocolate oh the chocolate was amazing i have to say
even though that hike was really really hard taking another break
the waterfalls were fantastic and it just felt so refreshing to step in the water
yeah that was pretty good and the the surprise i think of the day the thing we weren't expecting
we knew we'd be going to the butterfly farm but we didn't know we'd be stopping to see those birds
and we got to see two guns which is really awesome okay maybe i changed my opinion that was the one
i mean they were all really good i would say if you were going to come up here
the thing that i might skip is the butterfly farm probably yes i mean it was really cool tons of
butterflies but they're all like kind of within like a tent area and um i don't know i felt like
the birds felt a little bit more organic they were feeding them so of course it was
attracting lots of birds to the area but they were free it was completely open which i loved
well today was amazing incredible and tomorrow is going to be super exciting
too so tune in next week so you see that we are going on an adventure in cotapaxi it's a
national park and an active volcano it's gonna be amazing so cool i hope it's quiet
while we're there though thank you guys so much for watching we'll see you next time!