Mindo cloud forest

Hummingbirds are the most gorgeous and FAST little suckers. Trying to photograph them is like that trick in Karate Kid where the old bloke catches the fly using chopsticks. Ain´t easy, but thankfully on our recent 2 day trip to the cloud forest of Mindo (like a rainforest but higher up), we breakfasted at a cafe that had a garden full of specially-designed hummingbird feeders. There were so many dazzling, iridescent birds zipping around like bees dolled up for Mardi Gras. I went a bit nuts with the photography, as evidenced by the many bird pics on my Flickr site, but hard not to when they´re soooo cute!
The trip was our ´jungle expedition´ for this trip, as we didn´t have time to do a full excursion into the Amazon rainforest. But it was pretty awesome. We visited a couple of inactive volcanoes, ate fried plantain bananas stuffed with cheese, walked through the forest to some gorgeous waterfalls, and visited a butterfly farm. This was also very cool - enormous butterflies hanging around like lampshades, or parked on plates covered with mashed banana. We also saw a butterfly being born (well, coming out of its pupae). The butterfly pic here is Phil´s, using his whizzbang macro camera. And one of many highlights was being slobbered on by the enormous Bruno - canine caretaker of the butterfly farm.
Five sleeps to go!