Watch out for that....Tree

The last morning of my time in Mindo there were outside activities planned. I opted for the jungle hike and zipline trip. It was my best jungle experience of the trip.

The hike followed the sendero between the ridgetop lodge and the river. I had been partway down the trail a couple of times already and new that it crossed some pretty nice secondary forest. There were lots of butterflies, especially a group of brown butterflies known as satyrids.

Satyrid butterflies courting

Pedaliodes peucestas, a huge South American genus of Satyrids
with dozens of confusingly similar species

Descending lower into the forest, the canopy became more dense. Beautiful clearwing butterflies were fairly frequent. At one point, we passed a branch that had fallen from the canopy. An epiphytic orchid in full bloom was thus brought into view. We passed several orchid species. At one point the trail crossed a small stream where a helicopter damselfly had set up territory.

A clearwing butterfly

Tropical orchid (Catteleya?) on a fallen branch
A bit of canopy visible on the jungle floor

Polythore gigantea

Further down the trail, somebody had placed a dam across a small stream creating a jungle pool. Pretty, but clearly artificial. The only thing that I saw in the pool were a couple of goldfish. We did se lots of leaf beetles on this part of the trip. They included some of the most specitaular beetles that I saw on the entire trip- with the exception of the giant dynastine beetle on rotten fruit at the beginning of the sendero.

The jungle pool

Leaf beetle

More leaf beetle (Platyphora)

Still more leaf beetle (Aspicela bourcieri)

Dynastine (Rhinoceros) beetle on banana

The trail passed a rope swing that someone had set up. The entire party took turns playing George of the Jungle. Mucho fun. Most of the party continues on to the zip lines. A few of us hung back, however. Nancy, Caspar, Laurie, Eddie and I took a detour on our own and waited 45 minutes for the rest of the party to return. It was a welcome diversion. The smaller group meant that we could see a lot more stuff. We had two genuine botanists in this group- Nancy is even a tropical botanist. We spent our time botanizing and insect watching. I learned a lot, including useful information like the identity of nature’s toilet paper. I can now proceed much more fearlessly on jungle forays.

Doug of the Jungle

A hawkmoth. The gorgeous hot-pink hindwings are just barely visible in this photo. 
(Adhemarius sexoculata)

Don't touch! This tussock moth larva has urticating (stinging) hairs

Even the leafhoppers were pretty on this walk

A metallic blue staphylinid beetle

Later, back at Rio Mindo, we saw a bunch more beautiful tropical butterflies. It was a great trip. Someday I’ll return to Mindo.

Daggerwing butterfly (Marpesia corinna)

Quick, what's the square root of 7921? Diaethria neglecta has the answer.