We never intended to come here, but it coincided with our final night's lodging on the Andes mountain biking trip. Rafael, our psycho mountain bike guide, had pushed us to our limit for a casual holiday and we were sat down for the evening meal (in the company of his wife as it happens) and he was talking about the next day's plan where we would "start out by biking up an extremely steep and long hill...". I think his wife jumped in at that point seeing how tired we looked and said "or you could go take a look at the butterflies". It took us about 5 seconds to decide that the butterfly option sounded far more enjoyable of the two choices given.
Mindo is a small town north west of Quito which is well known for its cloud forest, hummingbirds and butterflies. We took in a lot of the amazing hummingbirds flying around the grounds of the Mindo Garden hotel the night before, so a dedicated butterfly session seemed like it could be interesting.
It was really good how they made a feature of showing you the full lifecycle. The pupas hanging on the rack were weird and amazing to see the butterflies hatch out in front of you of their own accord.
The big butterflies are really cool. We don't have anything this size back home in the wild so a pleasure to have a play with them on holiday to remind you that you're in a distant part of the world. Very enjoyable, recommend the place.
By Darrell Grundy - visited on 23 November 2005