Non-Monkey Rodent

The delay in D.C. caused us to cut out our trip with Happy Cricket to the beach. After delays in Miami, several aborted landing runs over Quito and an unexpected night in Guayaquil, we abandoned our plan of visiting Isla de la Plata and seeing the boobies because we just weren't up for a 12 hour bus trip after the airports and airplanes. So we arrived in Quito and headed almost immediately to Mindo (immediately the next day after visiting some churches, an art museum, the botanic gardens, an internet cafe, two bars . . .).

The small town of Mindo sits in the cloud forest

but that didn't stop the children marching down the main road for well over an hour from looking parched and about to pass out. We did not discover the reason for the festivities, but we did pick out a school for Ewaldina (our fictitious future child) if we should live on the Western Andean slopes near the equator.

Our second day in Mindo we went bird watching. It was a fabulous excursion, filled with tanagers, wrens, a helpful tucanette and eleven species of hummingbirds.

While watching the hummingbirds, I became excited by a loud rustling in the trees: a monkey! Or at least my first wild rodent in South America.