Mindo Ecuador Toucans & Other Colorful Birds!

Are you excited Amelia? I am excited. Hola Unconventionals! We're back in Mindo, Ecuador which is located just two hours west of Quito. It's a popular tourist destination for both the locals and international travelers. While we take a taxi up to one of the most popular tourist attractions in this area, hit the subscribe button so you get notified about our upcoming videos because otherwise you probably won't know about them. If you enjoyed our last video from this area showing the amazing hummingbirds of cloud forest and you are definitely going to want to stick around to the second half of this video. Yeah because you are not going to believe the rare sighting that we caught on video. All right what do you think? I think this is going to be really fun. All right let's go pay and get our ticket. Okay. We are going to take the Tarrabito Mindo. It's a five dollar cable car ride across the cloud forest canopy to the Sanctuary of Waterfalls or the Santuario de Cascadas. I have to admit I'm a tiny bit nervous because we're going to go zipping across the canopy but I'm thinking it's pretty safe. Are you going to make it? Yes. Are you nervous? Yeah. At least so. We got this. Better hold on because this thing goes fast. I know. I think we'll be just fine. Although he does start off slowly. All right what are your thoughts Amelia? It was really fast and fun and it felt very safe. You wouldn't look down though. There's a beautiful river running underneath us. Okay I'll look at that on the way back. There are two paths when you get off the cable car. You can go left to a series of waterfalls and we chose to go right to La Cascada Reina which is the queen of waterfalls. Did you want water? No I'm good. Okay let's go. I'll just drink out of the river if I have to. Well I do have my water. Amelia can we reenact the scene where Kathleen Turner falls down the hill and romancing the stone? Look at this it looks just like it. Yeah I'm gonna say no to that. No? Oh because then I could play Jack Colton. Jack T. Colton. I could say oh sh**. All right let's go. It feels nice to be hiking. Yeah it does. That's cool. That's a millipede I think. Amelia there's a lot of downhill on the way out. I guess there was a landslide. Yeah it's a long ways down too. We made it. Our first obstacle overcome. If we would have been like 15 minutes earlier we could have done the romancing the stone bit. This our first waterfall? Looks like we have to actually walk up the waterfall. It's nice that they have railings here. It might be a bit treacherous otherwise. It's already time for a wardrobe change. Yeah it's warm. I know it feels like it should be cold because we're in the mountains. It's cloudy. It's high elevation although not that high but it's really warm. There's another waterfall. These weren't even on the map unless we went the wrong way. Are we going to take a rest or you just want to keep on trekking? We got to beat the rain. All right. I think the rest stop there is the halfway point. So we've been walking for about 30 minutes but we take a little bit longer because we stop and film things so the average person might have hit that at the 25 minute mark. Making this a 50 minute hike up to the La Reina, the Queen Cascada waterfall. I think sometimes we forget this is an insect planet and it does remind me. Remember to wear your bug repellent. We were starting to see some mosquitoes and we both forgot our repellent. So if you see us smacking each other later in the video it's because of mosquitoes and nothing else. Amelia I hear a big waterfall. I don't think this is the big one though. We got here awfully quickly. I think all that rain last night has caused these other small waterfalls. So the big one may be really overflowing today. Not the main waterfall but we got to keep going. It is steamy up here. I know but it's not terrible. I'm not sweating. I'm just a little bit warm. Yeah the the temperature is really nice but it is humid. Yes it is. Wow this is a really big landslide. Something like that. I think so. I can't ever remember. Yeah caused by flooding. How do you say flooding? Inundación. Yeah we've had a lot of yeah we've had a lot of rain recently throughout Ecuador not just here in Mindo. This is amazing. This is incredible. Oh my gosh JP. In heaven. Here put your head over that so we can get an idea. Look how big that is. It's bigger than you Amelia. It's huge. Oh did I tell you it's poisonous? Oh ha ha. Watch out there's a big one right in front of you. This is crazy. This is crazy. Here's another mini waterfall. It is raining a bit which might make it treacherous on the way down. Wow this is that's a long ways down. Wow we better hurry up it's really starting to rain. The waterfall is getting louder so I think we're getting close which is a good thing because it is raining pretty hard right now. So we want to get this video finished before I have to put all my gear away. Paul is and there's rain and mist all around us but oh it feels so good. All right Amelia I think it's time for us to go it's starting to rain really hard. Yeah all my gear is wet. Okay all right I've always wanted to hike through the jungle in the rain. I know it's really fun. This is super fun. You're a bit wet. I know. Now we have to ride that cable car back in the rain. Yeah I'm not as excited about that. Me either. We walked back into town on a muddy dirt road in the rain and if you don't want to do that we recommend arranging a driver ahead of time. There weren't any drivers waiting so that's why we had to walk. When we were back in town we stopped at the Mercadito to pick up a few things to cook for dinner. We had an early morning adventure plan so we wanted to eat and go to bed. So we got one banana, a little papaya and a head of broccoli for $1.25. Are you ready to go? I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go back to bed. I know it's early. It's really dark. This is how early you have to get up to go see birds apparently. We're both really tired and Amelia just said espanol instead of espanol. Yes it was very bad. Very embarrassing. It was an embarrassing Spanish moment. Our guide Anderson picked us up the next morning at oh dark 30 to take us on our next adventure. Our first bird Amelia. It took us about 20 minutes to get here and I was so excited because so many of us grew up with this type of bird watching us eat breakfast. Ready for you to say something interesting. Something interesting. Anderson is setting up his telescope. Yes. Where are we Anderson? We stay in the Cotingas Reserve. Here is very special for bird watching. We can see many many different birds and the most important in here is the Playbill Mountain Toucan. Muy bien. Estamos muy emocionados. Oh yeah. Me too. In here we have 300 species of birds. Wow. 300 species. Wow. Here's a picture of Amelia's shoes while they're still clean. Did you sink into the mud? A little bit. So you're gonna probably have some you might have wet socks. Let's see. Oh you're just gonna go around. Oh look at you. Yeah see I just went around. I know you're blinding me with the light. It helps to have longer legs Amelia. Yes I guess so. But I know how much you like playing in the mud. This is bananas with coconut right? It's not for you Amelia. Bananas for the toucans. Oh muy bien. Muy bien. Perfecto. Todo bien. Yes the birds are hungry. What do you think Amelia? I think this is amazing. I can't believe how colorful they are. They're actually smaller than I thought they'd be. I think these are the Indian toucans. They're smaller. Yes but they're gorgeous. So this is my kind of bird watching because the birds come to us. We don't have to work hard. Yeah we get to sit in nice comfy chairs and take pictures from the blind. This is so incredible to be able to sit here and see so many birds and different types of birds and the toucans are really cool. These are the Andean mountain toucans. They're only found in this area. Oh wow it's so gorgeous through here. We've been so busy looking at birds I haven't stopped to actually look at where we are. I have to say I feel very well rested and alert but we haven't had to work very hard this morning for our bird watching. No it's kind of easy. JP in his natural habitat. That is why they call this a cloud forest. We went to the other feeding area on Rolando's property. He said the birds in that area are a lot more shy and they don't like to hang out with the big crowds at the other place. A big big thanks to Andersen and Rolando for taking us on this tour and if you like an introduction we will put a link below. Andersen is also a driver and he can drive you around the area of Mindo and back to Quito if you need it. If you enjoyed this video we think you will love this one. There is so much to do in the Mindo area. We cannot wait to go back and film more videos there. If you love toucans as much as we do then give us a thumbs up please and we will see you all in our next video.