Mindo Private Tour, Full Day from Quito

Great daytrip from Quito. Very varied and our guide Jhonathan was fun and a fountain of knowledge. The trip can also be tweaked somewhat to your personal preference.

Jhonatan was a great guide! He took me see a volcano caldera, amazing hummingbird and butterfly reserves, a cloud forest with a cable car and waterfall, and I was able to make chocolate and taste several different chocolate strengths and flavors. In route, he told me about Ecuador's history, economy, agriculture, exports, etc. and provided some fruits for me to sample. We had a light (my choice) lunch of empanadas which were delicious. His english is excellent! The driver was safe and good natured.

We had a really nice time on our private tour with guide Grace and driver Jaime! Grace made the effort to get to know us and tailored the day to our interests. She was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic. We didn’t feel rushed at any stop and felt all stops were worthwhile. We had a lovely lunch together, a comfortable car and overall good vibe. Jaime was a safe and professional driver. We loved the hummingbird stop and short waterfall hike especially!!

Great your! Our guides were so fun and accommodating to all of our wants and needs, it was beyond a great experience. My only complain was that in the price it said that waters and snacks were included in which neither of them were, so pack accordingly.

Mindo was a very special place full of wonder and opportunity to appreciate our beautiful plant and animal creation. Jossua’s knowledge opened our minds to learn and experience things we would never have dreamed of doing. I’ll never look at a hummingbird the same way again after getting to feed one in my hand. The little town in the volcano was darling too. We even got to shop for some one-of-a-kind treasures. A very special tour of a special place. Highly recommend this experience with Jossua as a guide!

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This was an excellent tour for our group. Jhonatan, the tour guide was super accommodating and knowledgeable. The hummingbird sanctuary was a highlight. Highly recommend this tour.

The private tour was great! The tour guide, Christian, was very knowledgeable and knew a lot about the history of Quito. The hikes were very fun and the view was spectacular as well. The driver was great too.

This was an amazing tour of all the highlights of the Cloud Forest in a single day. We were picked up in a modern well maintained van with A/C and room for 8 (6 guests plus guide and driver) as well as USB charging ports. Our guide Jhonatan was not only very knowledgable about Ecuador and the Cloud Forest but was fantastic with languages, and was able to notice and explain the difference between English, Spanish and Chichua (the indigenous language). All of the stops were worthwhile. Warning: there are spoilers ahead! We got some backstory on the local patterns of settlement while visiting the Pululuahua volcano. Feeding hummingbirds was a highlight, as was the tour of the coffee farm and coffee tasting at the same site. We saw many butterflys at the garden and began to notice subtle differences between for example the outer patterns of the owl and morpho butterflys. Not all types were as interested in being fed by hand. We also had fun climbing on the bamboo structures. Jhonatan gave us multiple options for the waterfall hike, and we picked one (Nambillo) that worked for the whole family and got some great pictures. We chose not to go swimming, but there are changing rooms and a bathroom at the bottom of the trail. The cable car ride to the start of the hike was fun and on the way back gave us a new perspective on the stream. The highlight of the trip was the excellent chocolate tour at Mindo Maya. We not only got an overview of the process of chocolate making starting from varieties of plants, but got to taste the fruit and beans at every step of the way. We also got to try raw cocoa powder that we ground our self, both plain and with coffee (mocha), pure hot cocoa, regular hot cocoa and a brownie with some fruit. The we had a tasting with sixteen different kinds of chocolate with an anazing tea made from cocoa fruit as a pallet cleanser. We also did the cocoa facial which led to some additional fun photos. Truly an outstanding experience.

Lovely day spent around Mindo. Jhonatan was a great guide, he customized the tour to suit us, and was good fun and very knowledgeable about the places we visited.

Ruben was an excellent guide who had a lot of knowledge to share about various topics and contributed greatly with his flexibility to make it an unforgettable day. We could decide for ourselves where we wanted to go and how much time we wanted to spend there, but the best and easiest option was to trust his recommendations. Our personal highlight was feeding the hummingbirds, but also the viewpoint over Pululahua, the waterfall, and the way there by cable car, the butterfly farm with a small subsequent birdwatching session, the chocolate tour with tasting, and the lunch at a restaurant on Ruben's recommendation were simply a 10/10. Even during the car rides, he was very responsible and always made us feel safe traveling from point A to point B. On the way to Mindo, he bought a piece of local cheese for us to try from the car window, which we enjoyed very much. It was an absolutely fantastic day, highly recommendable.