Our hostel-style, low-cost lodging is set up for individuals who want to volunteer in the Mindo Couldforest area. Our lodging offers clean Queen, Bunk and family accommodations.  We offer a guest kitchen and common area also.  Click here to see our lodging.  Click here to see a list of volunteer projects which we facilitate or help set up for individuals and groups.  Click here for a list of volunteer projects.

The founder/proprietor is Gary Ruegsegger and his wife Mary.  They come from Wisconsin, U.S.A. and they wish to help the local Mindo community:   Gary is a retired, former dairy-farmer with a PhD in Dairy Science, while Mary is a science teacher.  

We are small facility and offer up to 6 private guest rooms, for up to 15 total guests. A towel can be provided on loan.  Bedding and linen for a nominal cost.  This is hostel-style so we welcome people with sleeping bags.

Mindo is a small community nestled in the Mindo Valley in Ecuador, about 2 1/2 hours northwest of the capital city Quito. The Mindo Valley is a mountainous watershed in the western slopes of the Andes, where two of the most biologically diverse ecoregions in the world meet: the Chocoan lowlands and the Tropical Andes.  The Mindo, Saloya and Cinto rivers and hundreds of streams irrigate the landscape, which is a patchwork of cloud forests, secondary forests, agricultural land settlements.  The Mindo Nambillo Cloud Forest Reserve, Rio Bravo Reserve and Las Tangaras Reserve are all right here! 

We invite you to experience Ecuador:  it’s culture, it's beautiful Cloudforest landscape, it's food, it's people!   Leave your hectic lifestyle behind and enter into a volunteerism adventure.  We encourage one or two weeks timeframe.

Come and stay with us at the Mindo Volunteer Hostel (Hostal)!   This will be an adventure of a lifetime!