The strikingly-contemporary Mashpi Lodge was designed as the ideal springboard for exploring the mega-biodiverse world of its cloudforest reserve. The award-winning luxurious lodge, located three hours from Quito, offers breathtaking views of the forest from nearly every angle and combines the highest standards of comfort, service, guiding and cuisine. Conde Nast Hot List 2013 & It List Travel + Leisure 2013.Mashpi lodge is designed to completely immerse you in the cloudforest, while keeping its creatures safely at bay ? a luxury cocoon amid the clouds and tumbling mountains. The rooms, arranged over three floors, all face north, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, some on two sides, with the forest just a few meters away. You wake up to a captivating view awash with greens and browns, with trunks, branches, vines, leaves, birds and clouds all around. It's a bit like being in a capsule, observing life beyond from the comfort of your bed. Open the window, and the sounds of bird and frog calls wash over you. The rooms' lighting is subdued, hidden LED lights running along the handsome wooden bedheads providing a magical touch The lodge's water comes from the crystalline local rivers, filtering it and treating it before it returns to the forest. The water treatment plant works biologically, using bacteria. For this reason, the lodge supplies bio-degradable soaps, shampoos and conditioners for guests to use, which don't affect the water treatment system. We kindly ask you to use these amenities while staying with us. Due to the nature of the water system, we ask you to only flush toilet paper. The Lodge's towering, two-story Dining Room offers a dramatic setting for a lively gourmet experience. Here, Mashpi's chefs draw from the diversity of Ecuadorian cuisine and ingredients, making the most of its location between the coast and the Andes: the best of both worlds. Dishes are conjured with herbs (mint, peppermint, lemongrass, chillangua, wild garlic, citronella, stevia, basil and sweet basil...), spices, varieties of chilies, and leaves from the surrounding rainforest, as well as from delicious regional ingredients, such as a vast array of tropical and temperate fruits (think papaya, pineapple, naranjilla, guanabana, muyo, snake fruit, wild blackberry...) and palm heart, coffee, manioc, chocolate and plantain. The wonders waiting at Mashpi Lodge will delight the worldliest nature lover. Perched at 900 m (3,116 feet) above sea level and surrounded by lower montane rainforest and cloudforest, the Lodge is surrounded by a profusion of plant species, from ferns and bromeliads to hundreds of orchid species, many newly-discovered. A staggering 500 species of bird ? including some 36 endemics - are estimated to inhabit the forest, fluttering through the canopy. Monkeys, peccaries and even puma make their homes inside the Reserve crisscrossed with waterfalls between dramatic, verdant hills.