Mariposa Jardin (butterfly garden): Mindo, Ecuador

One of the things that Mindo is known for is its butterfly gardens.

We couldn’t go to Mindo and not check out at least one of the butterfly gardens.

There are two butterfly gardens in Mindo.  One is outside of town (by the zip lines), and the other is in town.  We chose to go to the one in town.

It’s a family who turned their yard into a butterfly, orchid, and hummingbird garden.  We were lucky enough that we had the place mostly to ourselves.  This made it more enjoyable.

The owner gave us a small talk about how butterflies live.

They start out as babies (larve).

And look like this after two weeks.

When they are three weeks old, some species get huge and look like this.

Then they build their cocoon, and turn into butterflies (as if you didn’t already know this…).

One thing that you might not have seen before though is that the camouflage of a butterfly’s wings is designed to look like large predators, so that other critters will leave it alone.

Check out the wings… Can you see the snake on the lower left?

One spot looks like the eye of an owl, and the other spot close to the corner of their wing, looks like the head of a snake.

Crazy how some animals adapt and defend themselves!

It was fun to look around, but they didn’t have too many different types of butterflies.

We did get to see butterfly sex though.  That was definitely interesting.

Then we went to look at the hummingbirds.  There were literally hundreds of hummingbirds here.  All of them competing for the food.

Next we checked out the orchids, but it wasn’t orchid season, so not many of them were in bloom.

They also have some pet rabbits and snails here at the garden, so we went to see them too.

And then the downpour started.  Luckily, we had mostly finished the tour by then.

Butterflies aren’t really my thing, so it certainly wasn’t the highlight of my trip to Mindo.  But, if you love butterflies, orchids, or hummingbirds, then you’ll probably really like it here.

Regardless, for $3, it’s definitely a worthwhile visit.

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