The Town Whose Art has drawn the Vatican and Other Entities' Attention

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Among the frozen breeze of the Andes is found a little town called Guano, settled just beside the magnificent Chimborazo Volcano. It is a town as simple as wonderful, with people devoted to the little-known occupation of weaving with sheep wool; a 500 years old art that has survived through time, going from one generation to the next. Nowadays, it is a reason to be proud for the whole country.

Two hands and a wooden loom are the instruments required for the creation of beautiful and astonishing works. In the town’s stores, located along its entrance and extended to its interior, you can find wool products such as quilts, legwarmers, jackets, tapestries and carpets on sale. The carpets are specially known for their Pre-Columbian and modern designs, some of them with very local designs with elements evoking Ecuador’s archaeology, as well as folk and colonial art. The importance that every artisan puts into the making of a carpet, constructing knot by knot a very soft, high-quality, perfect carpet, has made institutions such as the UN, the OEA, the Vatican and some Presidential Palaces have one of them in their rooms and halls.

Guano is a peaceful place, with little old houses and workshops where very warm, friendly people live, dedicated to their art. It is easy to get into a store and come out with a smile on your face, even if you didn’t buy anything. As you walk through this silent town’s streets, the people’s joyfulness and the beauty of the landscape will give you a feeling of peace and tranquility

Photo: edlifeguard09

Hang Gliding Truck Towing in Canoa Beach: Flying up to the Clouds

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To talk about Ecuador’s beaches is to talk about diversity. The beaches can be lonely or crowded; with white sands or dark sands; good for surfing, for swimming or for diving; virgin or touristic: there’s a beach in Ecuador for everyone’s taste.

In this occasion, we will talk about Canoa, a beach of natural beauty located in the province of Manabí, well-known for a sport commonly practiced there: the hang gliding truck towing, simply known as “towing”. As its name says, it is a hang glider pulled by an all-terrain vehicle fast enough to make it rise up to 700 meters (2,296ft) in the sky.

The real adventure starts when the guide lets the hang glider loose from the vehicle: that is the moment when complete freedom can be felt. You can observe everything from high above like bird while you feel the subtle caress of the clouds. You can see the endless, deep blue sea with its waves emerging and breaking into the white sands. The villages, the vegetation, the mountains and the forests expanding to the horizon can be seen all at once. You will have a personal image, a work of art painted in your memory that will always remind you of how small we really are in the immensity of this world.

Finally, you have felt part of the sky and the landscape surrounding you; you have forget your terrestrial condition and felt like a bird in its natural environment. Now, it is time to start the descent. Slowly and safely, like an Andean condor, you go down until you reach the beach with your feet… It is time to take this feeling of freedom down to earth.

Photo: freeform systems

The Story of an Extinct Society Still Alive in This Side of the Planet

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Those who have been at the largest Latin-American indigenous market of Otavalo must have realized that a world completely different from the one we are used to exists. They must have had a taste of that indigenous world, a world full of joy, art, history and pride. You can go further in the discovery of this mythical indigenous culture continuing on the main road to the north, where the village of Peguche is found: a community of proud craftsmen full of wonderful traditions and achievements, settled by a famous ritual waterfall. Peguche is a living testimony of an ancient society surviving in the modern world.

Peguche is only 20 minutes by car from Otavalo. There, inhabitants greet each other with a “ñanda mañachi”, which means “let me use your path” and is used as a sign of respect. Peguche is a village of unassuming people whose life goes around music and traditional handcrafts. From this mixture of occupations, great musicians have come out with a unique ability to create their own instruments. With the passing of time, these instruments have been improved to be perfect in quality and sound. Nowadays, the village produces both Andean and contemporary instruments with a sound so pure that people from all around the world travel all the way to that place just to purchase one of them.

Following by foot a rustic path that goes through corn and guava plantations is found the entrance to the track leading to Peguche’s ritual waterfall. Among legends and real stories, its secrets are hidden behind eucalyptus and other ancient plants, across a long river. The deafening sound shows that you are close to the sacred waters: a magnificent white water veil of 20m (65ft) high.

The Peguche waterfall is a place worth admiring from the viewpoint located on the opposite side of it, but the spiritual experience is even greater if you let the waterfall’s cool, relaxing waters fall over you, just as the indigenous people do. It is said that taking a bath at the Peguche waterfall renews your spirit, getting rid of all negative energies and welcoming all the good ones. On the night before the Inti Raymi Festival, the waterfall is a meeting point for indigenes and shamans who have rituals before the festivities.

A sign written at the entrance to the waterfall’s path may roughly describe the Peguche experience: “Come into my world and discover the beauty of my ethnic group, my art, my culture, my history and my ecology”. Peguche is a village in which there is much more than pure nature. This place, once ruled by the colonizers and currently completely managed by its own indigenous community, represents its people’s struggle for having a fresh start, overcoming the dark history of the past by recovering their traditions and old ways of life, and constructing a new society based on them.

Photo: colleen_taugher

Guayaquil and Santay: An Encounter between Nature and Modernity

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Ecuador’s modern city of Guayaquil and the virginal island of Santay are only separated by a river. Being so close to each other, the resulting contrast is amazing to see: on one side, Guayaquil stands as Ecuador’s most populated city and an icon of the country’s modernity. Only 500 meters (0.3 miles) away, the Santay Island is a virginal place that keeps an intangible record of its history and represents the past and the unknown to the modern world. From the Guayaquil’s famous pier, it takes only a 10 minute boat trip to get to this little natural paradise of 2,214 hectares wide and a population of 233, highly contrasting with the 2,800,000 people living in Guayaquil.

Arriving to the island, you can observe the exotic birds and plants living there and feel the peace of its inhabitants. Different types of tours are available, such as the canoe paddling tour, where you sit on a canoe floating almost as low as the water level and a tourist guide shows you the different bird species appearing among the foliage as you paddle along the river. If you rather take an inland tour, there are various paths to explore the island’s fauna and flora.

In Santay Island, you get to know all the people living there, listen to their stories and learn about their lifestyle while feeling happily welcomed. While you have a cup of hot chocolate, you may hear the story of the times when Simón Bolívar, known as the American Liberator, stayed in the island in 1829 to recover from an illness. You may even want to stay longer than planned, spending the night at the bamboo-made houses where you can comfortably rest after a day of adventures.

Being in the island and looking at the natural preservation of its surroundings feels like time had stopped. As you sit down to enjoy the sunset that kindly illuminates the green landscape full of singing birds, you can understand a way of life that has been preserved for centuries in this island; a way of life that exists only there, although it once was the lifestyle of the entire region including its close and beloved neighbor, Guayaquil.

Photo: Nihilo

Go From Snow to Desert Traveling Less Than 100km (62 Miles)

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Riobamba is a historical city located in the province of Chimborazo, 2,750m (9,022 feet) above the sea level. It is the central point of a road full of contrasts: a road leading to the snowy mountains if you go north; and to the desert, if you head south. Have an amazing journey on this 100km (62mi) road across the best of Ecuador’s Andean landscapes.

Going 38km (23 miles) northeast is found the Chimborazo volcano, the highest volcano in the country, and the world’s highest peak considering it is the farthest point to the center of the planet, due to its slightly flattened surface. Time goes by unnoticed when you see this volcano showing its bright, snowy peak and its astonishing height. Vehicles are left at the first stop, located 4,800m (15,748ft) high, and visitors must continue by foot to get to one of the world’s best viewpoints: the Andes seen from 5,000meters (16,404 feet) high. From this point, the adventure can only be continued by specialized climbers.

Going south, you find an amazing contrast: the cold Palmira Desert, whose name’s origins and its relation to the desert found in Syria are unknown. This is a fantastic spot to take pictures and the only place in the country where you can dream of a mysterious odyssey of the kind of the Saharan stories. It is a small desert 10 hectares wide located 3,150 meters (10,334 feet) above the sea level, in whose sands lies a pine tree forest. Such contrast is due to the forestation carried out by the Palmira inhabitants, who decided to turn the desert into an oasis. To walk among the pine trees, the sand, and a few cactuses while hearing the wind whistling among the trees, is undoubtedly a priceless experience.

The journey from the snows of the impressive Chimborazo to the sands and the pine trees of the cold desert of Palmira is an adventure full of contrasts and colors, a relaxing trip and an invaluable moment: definitely something travelers should not miss!

Photo: adrikar