July 17, 2018 – July 19, 2018
Mindo is 2.5 hours from Quito but a world away in terms of the environment. In 268 kilometres of winding road we dropped about 1,500 metres in elevation. Gone were the volcano peaks and bare mountains, replaced by lush tropical forest and gorges. Gone were the high rises, traffic and urban dwellers, replaced by palms trees, people on horseback and children playing in the stream while their mothers hand washed clothes and lay them on the rocks to dry.
May 4, 2018 – May 8, 2018
Bocas del Toro is the name of a province in Panama, it is the name for a set of islands that are part of that province, and Bocas del Toro (known as Bocas Town to avoid at least SOME confusion) is also the name of the capital of the province. We hadn’t planned on visiting the islands of Bocas del Toro (translates to Mouths of the Bull), but when we saw how close we were to them, we decided we had to go.
April 1 – April 3, 2018
We were happy to be back on the road and after a few hours of driving on good roads we arrived at our campsite at Somoto Canyon. We parked in a green field next to the river with a great variety of birds, including the national bird of Nicaragua, the Guardabarranco, which looks like this, I have yet to get a good picture of one, but, as you can see, they are pretty gorgeous. Feathers like that and you may imagine that this beauty lives in an elegant nest, surrounded by eider down throw pillows and firefly lanterns, but no, they live in a hole in the dirt banks alongside roads, trails and rivers (thus the name which translates to the guard of the bank). Could be quite nice inside I guess….
I had read about the ATM caves tour in our guide book, but wasn’t sure whether we should do it or not. First, it said that you had to be relatively fit to do the tour…Derek and I are fairly fit for our age, but we have been fitter….hours of sitting in a truck, you know…and younger…years of living, you know. Second, it was pretty expensive compared to other tours where you might, say, float on an inner tube through a cave. Then we talked with a fellow tourist at another campsite, and he had said that if you are going to pay for one tour in Belize, that it should be the ATM cave, so we signed up. We later were told that National Geographic listed the Top Ten Sacred Caves in the World, and the ATM caves was named number one. Sold.