Outside of Quito we took a two day trip to nearby Mindo. The community of Mindo, with its outstanding "Waterfall Blue Lagoon" (Cascada Laguna Azul) nearby, is a favorite resort area for people from Quito. Following are a few shots of the two-day trip to Mindo and the falls. Cascada Laguna Azul was most beautiful. To access it, we drove the bus (with permission) through a mud road on private property, through a banana plantation, where it got stuck... and then hiked (crawled) down a real "Romancing the Stone" Cartagena Colombia-style mud-jungle hill (if you saw the film, you'll know what I'm talking about)... then worked our way up one-half mile through the river bed to the 150 foot waterfall into the 100 foot diameter lagoon. No camera made it that far, so there are no photos. For a hint as to how magnificent this was, here is a picture of a similar waterfall in nearby Colombia... from a stamp. courtesy of Old Beeg's Waterfall Stamps of the World site at http://hometown.aol.com/oldbeeg/H2Ofalls.html
This is the waterfall I wish I had visited in Ecuador from San Rafael, http://ftp.sunet.se/ftp/pub/pictures/views/Ecuador/big-falls.jpg , on Rio Coca - by Pete Carmichael.
Here are some photos from that "Mindo" weekend.
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