Wonderful one-day experience - Great day experience from Quito to San Tadeo to do bird watching. List of 32 species indented thanks to the help of our Guide! Highly recommended

Josue is the best - Josue was amazing! The best tour guide ever and knew so much about everything. A must see experience. We ended up using him for three separate tours.

Mindo Cloud Forest - Feeding the humming birds was absolutely amazing. It was a great day out. Our guide Juan was excellent.

Two Great Experiences in the Mindo Cloud Forest - Roberto and Great Horned Owl adventures were outstanding! First Roberto worked with us to set up two custom trips to the Mindo Cloud Forest for our group of eight. Two of us wanted to birdwatch while the other six wanted to see and do multiple Mindo Cloud Forest activities. Both groups had a wonderful day in the cloud forest. We communicated with Roberto by email before we arrived in Ecuador. He was also thorough in his response and always returned our inquiries within hours. It was so easy to work with Roberto. Roberto conducted the birdwatching tour which visited several birding spots. I gave him a target bird list and he found every bird type on my list (Andean cock of the rock, beautiful tanagers, toucans, hummingbirds, etc). He also found the unexpected common potoo mother and baby. The mother and baby were hard to distinguish from the tree branch (see the attached photo). Roberto has a great passion for birdwatching and is an expert birder. Roberto also organized the second tour with Juan who was an excellent guide for the other group. The group did ziplining, Ecuadorian chocolate demonstration, butterfly sanctuary, beautiful birding spot, etc. If in Quito contact Roberto for your tours. I am confident you will not be disappointed. Thank you, Roberto and Juan, for such a beautiful day in the Mindo Cloud Forest!

Fun, customizable tour! - We had a great time on this trip! Roberto was fantastic, and knew all the great places to go to make our trip special. We saw such incredible bird species, had an amazing waterfall hike, and stopped at a wonderful spot for lunch and a coffee tour. Thanks for the trip, Roberto!

Roberto was great! - Fantastic personalized tour with Roberto! He took the four of us to the Mindo Cloud Forest as well as a few other stops along the way. He knew the right sites to go to where we had the places to ourselves. We took some wonderful photos and learned so much from him. Highly recommend Roberto and Great Horned Owl Tours. We also did a shorter "food tour" with him the evening we got in to Quito. He helped us navigate the street food vendors and was very enthusiastic about his city and what it has to offer...always enhances any tour.

Mondo Cloud Forest, Ecuador - What a great personalized (four of us) tour following our Galápagos cruise! Robert gave us a few options of what to see and then tailored the excursion to include what we wanted. Christian was a great driver—easily navigated the chaotic city traffic and country roads. Both of them clearly knew a lot about the area and had a passion for what they do. I would highly recommend this excursion to anyone with a free day in Ecuador. We saw a beautiful waterfall, green toucans and tanagers, many hummingbirds, and butterflies. We had a delicious lunch of grilled octopus, pork, chicken, ribs, and sausage.

Fantastic birding - We had a bridge day in Quito both before and after a recent Galapagos cruise. We had also asked the concierge at the Marriott for their recommendation for a local guide for Minde cloud forest birding, and he suggested Roberto, owner of Great Horned Owl adventures. Roberto picked us up the next morning and we drove down to Minde-about a 90-minute drive to get out of Quito. Roberto is familiar with the local birding community; we first stopped at 2 local areas where private landowners had set up blinds and feeding stations in the cloud forest, and we saw an incredible number of species including multicolored tanagers, toucans, and an amazing variety of hummingbirds. We then drove down a rutted dirt road through an open area, where he was able to spot kites and hawks. We ended the day at another small private reserve, where, at the end of 1/2 mile hike we came to a blind set up along a steep canyon wall, and we were able to see Cocks of the Rock about 20-30 feet away in the forest. All in all, an amazing day. We enjoyed it so much that we went out for a second day at the end of our cruise, again seeing multiple colorful species. We are not experienced birders but Roberto has been doing this for 20+ years and knows an incredible amount about the local birding opportunities. He will customize the trips to your preferences. Be aware that the traffic in and out of Quito is ridiculous and it will take 60-90 minutes to get out into the countryside. Because these are small reserves (basically landowners who have set up blinds and feeding stations), there is usually a small additional charge paid directly to them (5-$10 per), but we thought it was worthwhile to support the local birding community and encourage private preservation of the cloud forest. He will provide binoculars and spotting scopes if needed. He stopped for breakfast and/or lunch at local restaurants, which is also not included. Overall, this was a fantastic experience, (as you can see because we did it twice) and would do it again. The birding opportunities in Ecuador are amazing, even for novices like us, and it's a great way to see the countryside. Highly recommended.

Exceptional guide, expert advice, spectacular cloud forest! - We asked the concierge at the JW Marriott in Quito if he could recommend a full day tour into the Mondo Cloud Forest for the next morning. He connected us with Roberto of Great Horned Owl Tours and we are so glad he did! Roberto picked us up in the morning at our hotel in his very comfortable car and took us up to the Mindo Cloud Forest. He let us choose our own adventure, giving us both excellent advice and the freedom to follow our bliss. Roberto is an expert birder, a real scholar. His passion shines through. His expertise with the area was apparent. We strongly recommend Great Horned Owl Tours and Roberto specifically. He was an absolute delight with whom to spend a wonderful day.

Disappointing trip to the Mindo Cloud Forest - Perhaps our guide could focus on his clients rather than his phone and conversation with the driver. We thought we had arranged to have a one hour trek into the cloud forest but perhaps our guide Roberto did not understand this as he was adamant that we chose instead a 20min round trip to see a waterfall. We did not. We were very disappointed. A visit to the Mariposas de Mindo butterfly garden was an absolute highlight. Beautiful environment full of butterflies and great food too. Other than transport Roberto was not involved in this visit. The two stops on the way to the butterflies were almost insignificant. Roberto was busy either taking selfies presumably to promote his tour company, or busy on his cell phone. Regrettably we can not recommend this tour company.