Exploring Ecuador: A Journey Through Nature and Culture

This South American country may be small, but it has a dazzling array of wonders. Explore the colonial capital, Quito, before delving deep into the cloud forest, where hummingbirds flit and pumas stalk. Next, head high into the Andes and meet the indigenous craftspeople of Otavalo, then set out from Ibarra on a scenic train ride. End your adventure among the unique wildlife of the Galápagos.

Quito

The piercing blue light of a high-altitude dawn breaks over the old town of Quito, as dogs chase pickup trucks carrying produce to market. The trucks clatter over rambling streets cobbled with stones taken from the slopes of the Pichincha volcano looming above. Shopkeepers lift shutters, waving to one another as their wares are set out: sackfuls of cumin and cinnamon; aluminum pans; teetering piles of cows’ hooves; piñatas in the shapes of unicorns, Minnie Mouse, and SpongeBob SquarePants.

Layers of commerce take place on these steep, narrow backstreets. In front of the shops, women in felt hats and woolen ponchos roll mats across sidewalks. From these, they offer corn on the cob, potatoes, and avocados grown in the villages they commute into each day.

‘All around us you can hear chismes,’ says Paola Carrera, a guide to the San Roque neighborhood. ‘This is our word for the secrets – the news and the gossip – shared by these vendors, brought to our capital from across Ecuador.’ Carrera’s mother runs a shop selling agua de vida, the water of life. This intensely sweet tonic is made from 25 plants, including the amaranth flowers that give its bright pink color, and herbs from as far away as the Amazon forest.

‘I’ve always enjoyed living here, above the shop,’ Carrera says. ‘The buildings in the neighborhood are so traditional; they have such character. The people who belong to San Roque have strong ties to it, and it has always drawn visitors.’

Like most locals who pass the nearby whitewashed church of San Francisco, Carrera makes the sign of the cross as she enters the church’s massive wooden doors; some also touch the sculptures of sun gods at its entrance, an action said to give energy.

The church’s foundation stone was laid in 1535, soon after Spanish conquistadors arrived from Andalucía. In a pragmatic move to win local support, Franciscan monks allowed religious symbols familiar to the indigenous Quitu people to blend with the Catholicism of the invading forces. The conquistadors also brought a Moorish architectural style from Islamic North Africa and saw their wealth reflected in the spectacular gilding of the interior; for the people of Quito, the gold reflected the everlasting power of their sun god.

The Cloud Forest

Jungle music is playing 3900 feet up in the Chocó-Andean cloud forest. Rolling thunder sets the bassline. Pelting gobs of rain increase the rhythm, splashing against creepers, tree ferns, and thick, languid arms of moss. The chirruping of insects hurtles wildly up and down in pitch and pace. And then, once the squelch of boots against red mud comes to a halt, the air fills with an unfamiliar whirring.

‘White-whiskered hermit,’ whispers guide José Napa. ‘Violet-tailed sylph,’ he says, more excitedly. ‘Hmmm, brown Inca. Purple-bibbed whitetip! Empress brilliant!’

Napa is now surrounded by an emerald, ruby, and sapphire blur of hummingbirds, together rising boldly from the mists to approach the feeder he has just topped up with sugar syrup. A pecking order is quickly established, literally with a nip to the head for a bee-sized green thorntail that tries to push before a larger cousin. ‘They are so aggressive because they need to feed constantly,’ Napa says. ‘They have such a high metabolism, and the flowers they prefer to feed from can be surprisingly scarce in the forest.’ One bird proves its eagerness by hovering within an inch or so of a floral pattern on a T-shirt, taking a close look on the off chance.

Alongside the Amazon, the Chocó is Ecuador’s other form of rainforest, watered by up to 20 feet of rainfall each year as clouds barrel off the Pacific and break against the lower slopes of the Andes. It is one of the dampest and most biodiverse environments on Earth, threatened by the pollution of waterways, slash-and-burn farming, and illegal logging.

Napa used to be a subsistence farmer, growing peanuts, cassava, and bananas. He then joined the logging trade. Fourteen years ago, a private lodge was built on the site of the local sawmill, so Napa came to work here instead. This became an eco-hotel, Mashpi, sitting in a 2900-acre wildlife reserve where once there was a logging concession. The reserve is set within a 42,000-acre buffer zone for sustainable development, aimed at offering animals the corridors to migrate between pockets of rainforest.

Otavalo

The road toward Otavalo bounces up into the Andes, past black pigs lolling in the dust and squat cows grazing on knee-deep grass. Fields of fava beans, lupines, and corn are close to harvest, bordered by fiercely-spiked agave plants with their alien blooms sprouting skyward. Where the terrain becomes too steep for agriculture, pumas, spectacled bears, and condors still live.

As in Quito, the markets of Otavalo are gathering points for inhabitants of the surrounding countryside. Mass today in the main church is being said in Kichwa, the indigenous language evolved from the ancient tongue spoken by the Inca invaders – who then succumbed to the conquistadors. Outside, local Imbaya people are quietly searching for paying customers, the men mostly wearing tautly sculpted felt hats over a single long, plaited ponytail, and the women with necklaces of glass beads wrapped in gold leaf, their navy blue ponchos and white blouses exquisitely hand-embroidered with flowers.

Traditional crafts are far better preserved in villages northeast of Otavalo. In Agato is a low stone workshop crammed with simple looms, baskets of alpaca wool, and a hutch of squeaking guinea pigs. Inside, Luz Maria Andrango weaves a guagua chumbi – a ‘baby belt’ used to tighten an Imbaya woman’s blouse. It is colored with natural dyes made from red cochineal beetles, yellow lichen, indigo, and rich, brown walnuts, and it will take her 10 days to finish.

Ibarra

Hop on a train from a colonial mountain city to an Afro-Ecuadorian community set among sugarcane fields. Your route passes near – and sometimes through – volcanoes.

The Tren de la Libertad (Freedom Train) is in no hurry to leave. A team of brakemen uniformed in double denim check the two red carriages, preparing for a sharp descent through the Andes. The morning rush hour has never quite arrived in Ibarra, the largest city north of Quito. Wooden stools are set at the edge of the rails, coffees are shared, and papayas, newspapers, and boiled sweets are hawked to the passengers who mill about nearby.

This former colonial mountain outpost has a troubled history. Imbabura volcano is said to be the sacred protector of the region, but an earthquake in 1868 devastated Ibarra. At the base of the volcano is Yahuarcocha lake – its name means ‘lake of blood,’ in memory of 30,000 indigenous Caranqui warriors killed here in the 15th century by forces of Incan emperor Huayna Capac.

The Galápagos

Beneath the rich glow of a tropical sunset, a group of taxi drivers face off in a volleyball game. Little kids shriek with excitement and popcorn is eaten in immense quantities, as some unusual visitors join the cheering crowd. A Galápagos sea lion nudges its way onto a bench by the harborside of Puerto Ayora, draping its flippers over the edge and pretending to sleep – one eye open in search of a snack. From a fast-rising tide pours a horde of Sally Lightfoot crabs, their scarlet claws probing the rocks for food. They are joined by marine iguanas, with snouts wrinkling as they sneeze out the salt absorbed during dives for seaweed.

The Galápagos were known as Las Islas Encantadas – The Enchanted Islands – by the first explorers to arrive here in the 16th century, and certain myths about them endure. Not everyone realizes that this archipelago of 19 islands is part of Ecuador, the country’s mainland lying 600 miles across the Pacific. And although the often unique and strangely bold wildlife captures all attention, a human population of 30,000 lives alongside – half in the town of Puerto Ayora, on the central island of Santa Cruz.

Many of the Galápagos’s classic wildlife encounters can be had on Santa Cruz rather than by swiftly embarking on a cruise, as most visitors do. ‘Everybody is happy now, there is so much food,’ says Ramiro Jácome Baño, a naturalist guide officially sanctioned by the Galápagos National Park. This is the hot and wet season, a time of plenty. Baño points to the thickets of herbs that have sprouted around Cerro Dragón, a fanglike volcanic peak that rises from ancient lava flows on the northwestern tip of Santa Cruz. ‘Stop!’ he warns dramatically as a male land iguana swaggers onto the path ahead, with resplendent yellow skin. The endemic land iguanas and marine iguanas of the Galápagos are believed to have shared ancestors that landed here after a great sea journey.

At the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz, a conservation success story is playing out. More than 3000 giant tortoises have been raised from hatchlings to a size where they can resist attack from invasive species such as cats, pigs, or dogs introduced by passing mariners. The adolescent tortoises are released into the wild and can live to an age of 200. Today, in the noon heat, they lounge like majestic boulders in the El Chato Tortoise Reserve’s mud pools. Creatures with faster-paced lives bustle about them: Darwin’s finches, displaying to one another, as short-eared owls keep watch from above.

The diverse birdlife of Santa Cruz also can be observed at the Finch Bay Eco Hotel, a brief taxi boat ride from Puerto Ayora. Guests share the open-air bar with Galápagos mockingbirds hunting tiny geckos, and the pool with a family of white-cheeked pintail ducks. Puerto Ayora’s beach lies just beyond; there, locals cool down by splashing on inflatable floats or attach snorkels to search for creatures every bit as remarkable as the land-based wildlife. Within a short paddle, a Pacific green sea turtle can be seen grazing on algae, and a trio of eagle rays glide in perfect formation.