Walking The Line

 Tuesday Quito to Mindo and back.

We are touring for a few days with a very enthusiastic Tours By Locals guide, Vivian.  I marvel at how one can show people the same sights day after day for thirty years and still exude this level of appreciation. But she certainly does.

We stopped to see birds.  So so many pretty birds.  Tens of kinds of tanagers. Tens of kinds of hummingbirds. And a couple kinds of toucans.

We stopped at a butterfly farm and saw tens of kinds of butterflies. 

We stopped to try local coffee.

We stopped to try local coffee ice cream.

We rode a chair lift down overtop of the cloud forest canopy. (Cloud forests exist at higher elevations than rain forests).

We tasted local chocolate…tens of kinds of local chocolate.

And we crossed the equator eight times in the process. Seven times driving. Once on foot.

The on-foot time was not at the first little monument to the French scientists who mapped out this section of the equator. That monument isn’t actually on the line.  Not at the bigger replica monument that the government erected later coz that is not on the line. But in a tiny little town on a simple little street verified by the compass on our iPhones and commemorated with a good luck kiss across the line.