OK here are some pics from the tech/cultural trip we did starting last Saturday.

So you can see the ecolodge we stayed at while in Mindo, a small town known for its budding ecotourism offerings. The market is actualy flooded with choices and noone is really clued in as to how to run a business. Customer service varies a ton and it seems that everyone offers the same kind of stuff, like river tubing or butterfly walks, etc. We didn´t do that, but we did get the chance to partake in a nice strenuous hike to a waterfall with a nice 12 meter jump into the whitewater. Yes I did it. No I don´t have a picture to prove it. Deal. As you can see, part of the journey involved a trans-river cable car ride. For a fairly developed area, it was rather wild. Especially the trail pirates who basically charged us twice for the privilege of hiking into the ecological reserve and playing around near the waterfall. Snakes and insects were plenty but it was cool enough that they weren´t biting much. After a day and a half in Mindo we went to Pedro Vicente Maldonado and stayed at an even fancier ecolodge (poorly managed) where we got hot showers (OOOOOOOH) and then had to trudge around on an integrated farm which would have been much more fascinating if I weren´t dying of tuberculosis or whatever and if it hadn´t been 90 degrees and swarming with biting flies that left little bleeding sores wherever they got their mitts on us. Bastards! There were some really cool plants to be seen there however, so I´ll post them in a minute.