Up in the Clouds

     So since I've posted last, we've been up to a lot of things here in Ecuador. We left our first location and traveled Northwest to the city of Mindo. On our journey here yesterday, I got to experience being in two places at once. I was located upon the highest point on the equatorial line. Ecuador is one of 13 countries in which the equator passes through but it is the highest due to the reigon of the Andes. Here we learned and experienced the different effects the different hemishperes have and the equators nature of equality. For instance, if you look at the globe with the north and south poles facing horizontally and spin it, the ones looking at the Southern Hemisphere will see the earth spinning in a clockwise direction. Meanwhile, the Northern Hemishpere is being seen spinning in a counterclockwise direction. The equator will just spin straight. Another interesting experience here was trying to walk on the equatorial line. They had us walk like you were being tested for drunk driving, one foot in front of the other with your arms on either hemishpere with your eyes close. Although this may sound simple it was actually very difficult as you could feel the magnetic forces pulling you in either direction. 

     After our brief stop at the equator we continued on our journey to the Cloud Forest near Mindo. We are staying at the Bellavista resort which is one of the most beautiful places I've seen. There is so much green here. In taking a biology course were are learning about all of the different vegetation as well a birds, which is super interesting because they are unique to this area as well as vast in how many are seen here. We started our day today with an early 6:30 am hike. This mainly in part so we could see the different birds that are here. One bird that is very common among this location is the hummingbird. As Willie told us there are roughly 52 species that can be seen at this location among the 132 in Ecuador and appox. 300 in the world. As Ecuador can be home to about 40% of the worlds species of hummingbirds. 

     After seeing and observing these beautiful sights we moved on to our first scheduled adventure, ziplining. As I have ziplined many times before at Camp Wapsie nothing compared to the view we were given on our canopy ziplining experience. We were blessed with one of our first non-raining days and a view that is unimanginable. We went on roughly 12 ziplines in the forest which were above the trees which allowed us to see many of the different plant life we're studying about. Tomorrow we will be heading in the amazon which I'm sure will bring an adventure in and of itself.