Ecuador packs four completely different worlds into a country the size of Colorado. The Galapagos and Quito get all the attention, but the cloud forest and the Amazon are where kids get muddy, meet frogs and stop asking for the tablet. Both are reachable and both work with families if you pick the right version.
Mindo
Two hours from Quito the road drops into a wet green valley and the temperature warms up. Mindo is a small town built around birds, butterflies and chocolate. The hummingbird gardens have feeders where dozens of species hover at arm’s length. The butterfly farm lets kids hold them. The chocolate tours end in tasting. There is a cable car across the valley to a set of waterfalls and there is tubing on the river for kids over about six. Two nights is right. Lodges range from simple to lovely and most have hammocks, which is the whole point.
The Amazon
Ecuador’s Oriente is the most accessible Amazon in South America. From Quito you fly half an hour to Coca, then take a motorized canoe two hours down the Napo River to a lodge. The good lodges have family programs with shorter walks, night hikes with flashlights for frogs and tarantulas, canoe trips through flooded forest, and a canopy tower for monkeys and macaws at dawn. Four days and three nights is the standard.
Ages
Mindo works from toddlers up. The Amazon works from around seven, when kids can handle the heat, the bugs, early mornings and sitting still in a canoe. Malaria and yellow fever advice changes so check with a travel clinic before you commit. Lodges provide rubber boots in kids’ sizes and mosquito nets over every bed.
What it costs
Mindo is cheap. The Amazon lodges are not, because everything including the food and the guides comes in by boat. Prices are usually all inclusive from Coca. It is a comparable spend to two or three days on a Galapagos cruise and for a lot of kids it is the part of the trip they talk about most.
Putting it together
Quito for two nights, Mindo for two, back to Quito, fly to Coca for the Amazon, back to Quito, then the Galapagos. Three weeks does it without rushing. Two weeks means choosing between the forest and the jungle, and for a first trip with younger kids I would choose Mindo and save the Amazon for when they are older.
Planning Ecuador with kids? Start with the full Ecuador family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.
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