Mindo

Next town in the north we visited is just outside Quito, Mindo.  Again we found ourselves in a town that seems to get a lot of rainfall, and is surrounded by mountains covered in lush jungles.  Again, lots of hiking to do... This particular hike we did involved crossing a valley on a 1km long cable car.  This is what opperate the cable car.  A full car engine and tranmission, complete with it's gear shift!  

View from the cable car, we're about 1/2 way accorss and can still barely make out where we're going...

We're definitely upa good height...

And a few pictures from the hike... this was a particularily nice bridge.

Best staircase ever (part of the hike) carved into a huge log that was washed downstream and used to get up and past this particular waterfall!

Yup, more waterfalls!  Had to go for a swim in this one.

And finally, we broke down and did a canopy tour ~ zip lining.  4km of zip lines over 13 lines.  This one below is one of the longer ones.  If you can see the little black sqare in the middle of the picture, that is where we were headed on this line!

Jillene coming in on one of the shorter lines...

 Jillene coming in on a longer one... was a good fun way to spend the afternoon.