MINDO, ¡QUE LINDO!

Joelle McDonald
Jul 28, 2025
11 min read

Where We Stayed

We stayed at Biohostal Mindo for our one night visit. It was the cheapest hostel we could find when we booked last minute. In pictures, it had hammocks and large open air areas, perfect for the relaxing out of the city weekend we envisioned. We booked a private room and it came with a pretty impressive breakfast included (if you aren't a gluten-free vegan).

Fun Facts

On the way to Mindo, we were the closest we've ever been to kidnapped. Read more in the adventure section...
Mindo is in a cloud forest just two hours away from Quito, making it a popular get-away spot for people looking a few days in nature.
Mindo is home to some of the highest bird species diversity in the world. This is a major birdwatching destination.
Mindo is very close to Quito geographically, but to get there, you have to drive around big mountains and volcanos, making the journey significantly more arduous.
There is only one ATM in Mindo and cards aren't always accepted. On busy weekends, the ATM can run out and leave you stranded.

Eats

Despite being such a tiny town, Hannah and I stumble upon a fully vegan restaurant! We discover it, despite its understated facade, as we hopelessly wander to the end of the main street in town, hungry for dinner. The vibes are incredible. It is a tiny room, where what looks like a family kitchen is tucked away behind the decorative front of an old truck. A few tables are squeezed inside, with some extras spilling out onto the sloping sidewalk. A tiny, spry abuela is clearly leading the charge, welcoming us in as if we are her nietas who look a little too thin.

We each order some sort of sandwich where smashed, fried plantains replace bread. Abuela brings us plantain chips, and when our food comes, a strange beverage comes with it. Being seasoned travelers, Hannah and I are wary of any liquid of unknown origin, but abuela lovingly demands we drink it. She even makes me translate the menu listing its ingredients to English for Hannah while she stands over me nodding. "Muy saludable. Es necesario para beber." She leaves our table only once Hannah and I have each taken a sip. It is a thick liquid, but smoother than a smoothie. A homemade fermentation of all sorts of fruits and quinoa that creates a dingy gray color. It tastes kombucha adjacent and doesn't seem deadly, but Hannah and I are both hesitant to gulp it down. I don't think abuela is pleased, but as any abuela would, she says "Vas a volver" before we leave. A statement, not a question. We assure her that yes, we will come back tomorrow. We make good on our promise at lunch the next day, where despite asking for no beverage we are served thick gray fermentations once again. Certainly made with love.

Note: We also eat at a taco place with a vegan option. It is good. Far less notable than our meals with abuela, so I'll leave it there.

Streets

Mindo is a very small town. There is one main street that services the tourism industry, lined with restaurants, accommodations, souvenir shops, and outdoor adventure concierges. On the way into Mindo, a turn off that main street takes you to the more local residential area. I highly doubt many tourists wander those streets, which is a loss because the area seems full of love. The streets are wide and clean, with children playing in them independently. Each house is clearly well cared for and has its own personality. The only thing that makes us nervous over here is the stray dogs. After I had a few run ins with a stray dog in Albania, I'm wary of them.

Many of the activities people come to Mindo for are outside of town, where nice accommodations are popping up for bird watching and feeling deeper in nature. While the town itself is close to nature, loud ATV tours pass through almost constantly, so it isn't particularly peaceful.

Sights

Mundo Maya Chocolate Tour

On the way to Mindo, our taxi driver points out Mundo Maya Chocolate Tour as we drive into town. He really passionately says it is the best chocolate tour, so of course, we have to try it. After we drop our bags at our hostel and get some lunch, we walk to the chocolate tour at the far end of town. We ask to do a tour as walk-ins, and they only need ten minutes to prep before we get ushered into a beautiful open-air building with long tables and hot fiery ovens lining the edges. A fun Israeli couple joins our group, making us four.

I will not be able to do the chocolate-making process justice in description, but I'll give an overview. First, we learn about the three main types of cocoa pods in the world, the highest quality of which is native to Ecuador. When the pods are ripe, they are harvested, and the beans are wrapped, with fruit still attached, in banana leaves to cause fermentation. After the fermentation is complete, the beans are moved into three different stages of drying. Once that is complete, the hard, dry beans are roasted over a flame with constant motion, much like the coffee we roasted on the Salkantay Trek. The husks are removed from the toasted beans and set aside. These can be steeped in hot water to create cacao tea, which we sneakily made for ourselves and is delicious! The remaining toasted beans can now be easily crushed into cacao nibs, but we instead use a large grinding stone to make cacao paste. Our guide mixes the cacao paste with hot water for us to try, and Hannah and I love it. The Isreali man in our group, not so much. It is extremely bitter. Hannah and I are used to that, but he is a Hershey's guy.

After cacao paste is made, a more industrial process takes over. The chocolate has to be oxygenated, mixed with sugar at a warm temperature, them tempered on a marble slab before it's ready to pour into molds. We are shown their equipment, but skip to tempering and pouring prepared chocolate into a mold. Hannah gets that responsibility. With the extra chocolate, we are instructed to give ourselves face masks because the chocolate is highly nourishing. Hannah is hesitant but I full send and she gets on board. With chocolate covered faces, we are given a plate of treats to enjoy. The guide offers a sink to wash our faces, but Hannah and I decide we want to let the chocolate REALLY soak in to our bloodstream, so we leave it on for our walk to the hostel. I truly cannot convey how many comments we got from locals and tourists alike on the street. Did we look ridiculous? Absolutely. Did we put a smile or laugh on the face of every single person we passed? Absolutely. Worth it? YES!

Tarabita and Santuario de Cascadas Mindo

Hannah and I each picked one activity we really want to do during our quick visit to Mindo. Hannah's pick: the Tarabita and Santuario de Cascadas Mindo. This is a private hiking area a twenty minute drive outside Mindo on a dirt road. We take a cab from Mindo, which we'll admit feels pretty sketchy. A random man on the street sees us and asks if we need a cab. I say yes, he calls someone, and a few minutes later a green and white pickup truck pulls up for us. We are very worried this guy just called a friend to kidnap us, but we reluctantly get in after they explain the green and white pickup trucks we see are a special type of cab that transports good as well as people. Sure enough, we get to where we are going incident free.

After paying the entrance fee, we load up into a packed cable car that shoots over a wide valley. It is like ziplining in a box with eight people! The view is beautiful, and even better, the tarabita saves us about an hour of hiking each way.

Once we unload, an employee gives us a very brief and confusing orientation in Spanish about the paths available before leaving us to fend for ourselves. There are seven waterfalls, five accessible along one path, and the other two accessible along another. Hannah and I want to get some bang for our buck, so we pick the five waterfall trail.

The hike is beautifully shaded by an impressive diversity of plants. We see many butterflies, and I force Hannah to stop and listen to birds with me often. It's busy, but the people around us add entertainment to our hike. A woman with a two inch booger dangling out of her nose stops me to ask if I had a passport in an incoherent conversation that still bamboozles me. Another favorite was a two year old boy toddling his way along in a Monsters Inc hat with his incredibly patient and supportive dad.

All in all, we saw five waterfalls, rode on the Tarabita twice, stopped for butterflies and birds, never got lost, and I only half fell off the trail once. We'd highly recommend!

Ornithological Center

My activity pick in Mindo is a visit to the Ornithological Center. We pay our last $10 for the admission fee, hoping for nothing to go wrong on the way back to Quito. First we are instructed to walk around small trails that have been cut into the cloud forest on the property. Though the Ornithological Center is in town, it is right on the edge, so it has the advantage of accessibility and nature. We stumble upon a tall platform set along the trail, where cut fruit and seeds are set out just a few feet from a viewing area. Hannah and I are the only ones who care to climb to the top, and we spend awhile watching brightly colored birds of all kinds land, snack, and swoop away. We didn't see a single bird on the trails, so this really redeemed the walking for us.

We return to the main Ornithological Center building, which is really more of a family living room with a pack-and-play for baby and chair for grandma. Here we get to do the most exciting part: feed hummingbirds out of our hands! We are each handed a bright red bottle cap of sugar water and immediately get swarmed by hummingbirds. The sensation of a hummingbird's wings fluttering so fast inches from your head is indescribable. It is like the air is vibrating. They land in our hands, and it is almost impossible to control ourselves with such a weird sensation. Of course we have to so we don't hurt the birds. Later on, we are given flowers with nooks and crannies filled with sugar water, which lets us feed the hummingbirds in a way that feels a bit more healthy and comfortable for us. Before we leave, we take a wobbly spiral staircase up to the Center's highest (and sketchiest) viewing platform. Here, we take turns spotting the hummingbirds waiting their turn to feed from hands amongst the branches.

Disclaimer: I have a feeling this type of feeding is not a positive thing for the hummingbirds, as it creates dependency of unnatural energy sources and prevents them from providing ecosystem services to real flowers in the forest. We still participated and were filled with joy. This is jut a reminder to be mindful of any interaction you have with animals in a tourist setting and be sure you are comfortable with the negative externalities your engagement may produce.

Adventures

The Trials and Tribulations of Getting to Mindo

Getting to Mindo from Quito is theoretically very easy. There is a bus that runs straight from a major bus terminal to Mindo a few times a day. We read that the busses can sell out on the weekends and we are traveling on a Saturday, so we plan to leave with plenty of time to spare before the last morning bus to Mindo leaves. Damon and his friend very generously drive us to the bus stop, but Hannah and I take a long time getting out the door. By the time we get out of the car, we aren't particularly early. Then, we get lost in the bus terminal. By the time we finally find the right ticket counter for busses going to Mindo, it is sold out. Oh no. That is our plan out the window.

Since the next bus isn't for hours and our trip to Mindo is already quick, we don't want to wait. We order an Uber to Mindo, a two hour drive priced at just $30, but drivers aren't particularly eager for the drive. We get in one Uber only for the driver to load the route and then refuse to take us and demand we cancel the ride in a very confusing conversation. We assumed drivers would realize a $30 fare would obviously be a long trip when the average Uber ride is under $3, but two drivers accept the ride and pick us up only to kick us out of their cars.

Hannah and I are starting to feel desperate. When we got to the bus station and realized the Mindo bus was sold out, there were a bunch of taxis whose drivers were calling "Mindo. Mindooo." We were hesitant to take one, preferring the traceability of Uber, but we are out of options. We walk up to a driver who we have refused multiple times, and Hannah negotiates a good price with him. We get $5 off the drive so long as he is allowed to fill the empty seat with another passenger. Works for us. He can't find any takers at the terminal, so we start the drive.

This is where things start to feel weird. I had been chatting with the driver, explaining that we hesitated to take his car at first because we are really conscious of safety and like that Ubers can be tracked. He tells us that Uber is actually far more dangerous because taxi licenses are expensive and the drivers are true professionals, whereas anyone can drive an Uber. Fair enough. But then we pass a bus stop, and a random man gets in the car. We have already agreed to this for the $5 off our fare, but the interaction between the driver and man is so fast that it feels like they must know each other. Then, the random man turns, sees Hannah and I, and starts asking odd questions, including if we are single or married. Though the driver knows I speak fluent Spanish and can understand the man, he lets me get away with it when I play dumb to the stranger. "Lo siento, no sé la palabra 'soltera'." Hannah and I are both on alert now.

The driver takes a call, which he says is from his son who is a student and Uber driver. He tells us his son will drive us to Mindo after the call. Hannah and I look at each other, filled with uncertainty. We pull over on a street with no businesses, bus stops, or pedestrians to wait for his son to come. When an unmarked car pulls up, the driver tells us to get out and get into his son's car, random creepy man included. Alarm bells go off in Hannah and I's heads.

We realize our situation. We are on an empty street (aside from flowing traffic) with three men who we don't know, being asked to get out of an official taxi and into an unofficial, untraceable car to drive a long distance on roads we don't know. Sure, the taxi driver seems nice, but a lot of the worst things happen abroad with strangers who win your trust. Hannah and I insist on making a call before we agree to get into the other car. Standing on the sidewalk, we call Damon, the family friend we are visiting who works at the U.S. Embassy. A call straight to the embassy seems like a good move here. He doesn't pick up, and Hannah and I look at each other panicked. It was so hard to find a ride to Mindo in the first place, and now, if we do not get in the car, not only are we not on the way to Mindo, but we are easy targets, alone with luggage on a random street in Quito. Thankfully, the driver must see the fear on our faces because he tells us to get back in his official taxi and that he will drive us. I'm sure that the other car really was the very kind driver's son and he wanted to give his kid a good job, but I'm so glad Hannah and I have strong instincts. It's impossible to ever really know and worst case scenario could have been really bad. Always trust your gut, even when it inconveniences others.

After we drop off the stranger, our driver asks us if we felt unsafe when he tried to switch drivers, and we tell him yes. He tells us his son is very trustworthy, but that the stranger we picked up was creepy. I'm glad he agrees. Our driver really is a good man, but eager to avoid another Code Red situation, Hannah and I buy our return bus tickets to Quito the day we arrive. No more weird cab rides.