Our "Rae" of Sunshine Shines in Mindo

This past Saturday, the day after Rae's birthday, we decided to surprise her with a day of fun and adventure.  The past week had been challenging with Ed and I at work all day and Reid and Rae pretty much at the apartment hanging out.  So, after consulting with our "tour director", Fernando, the director of transportation, we decided on Mindo, a town in the cloud forest.  We invited some of the folks who we have become fast friends with and off we went.

The first stop was the butterfly gardens where there were at least a dozen different species for us to admire.  The one above, "Owl's Eye" has great camouflage as you can see.  We tried to get one open in flight so that we could show its brilliant blue upper body.  

Can you see the one in mid flight?!?  Cool!!

Watching the butterflies chow down on nectar made us all hungry.  At Mindo Gardens, we dined right beside the Mindo River.  The noise of the rushing water reminded me of El Portal near Yosemite.  As you can see in the following pictures, Rae loved our lunch spot.  She had some cheese with a pizza while the rest of us dined on the special of trout in banana leaves.  Very tender and flavorful for around $8.

Jugo de Mora or Blackberry Juice-check out the colors!!

The waitress even brought Rae a brownie which is a local speciality due to the chocolate factory.

R and R used some team work to cross the "raging" Mindo River aka Indiana Jones style.

Then, due to Birthday Girl request, we donned climbing gear to brave the zip lines.  For our first time, we did three lines...and we are looking forward to doing 12 when our first brave visitors arrive...who will it be?!?

After a short hike where we saw these two beauties and much more, we made a quick stop at the chocolate factory to buy a few goodies.  We'll be back for the highly-recommended tour.  Then after a two hour drive back to Quito, Rae was quite anxious to open her birthday gifts.  Her favorite was the "llama made out of llama".

As I said on Facebook, since this beautiful "Rae" of sunshine came into our lives 12 years ago, she has filled us with smiles, laughter and joy.  Thanks for sharing your "radiance".

Happy Celebrating Life's Joys,

TEAM MILLIS