Category: Nature

:: tagua ::

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Creativity is found in the most unlikely of places sometimes. Set deep in a residential neighborhood of Quito, a local Ecuadorian family makes a living making magic happen from a simple seed. The end result is jewelry in a mixture of fantastical colours, shapes, and sizes – all made from the tagua seed.

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Starting with a coconut seed from the tagua palm trees found along the central Ecuadorian coast, Gladys Moquinche’s family dries, peels, polishes, shapes, polishes again, dyes, dries and polishes a third time, and then drills holes to make beads. Sounds simple, until you realize that the seeds are small and hard and so it’s necessary to use high powered sanders and saws to conjure up the desired final product.

The workshop is a bit of a hodge podge mixture of rock tumblers, hole punchers, and other mechanized machinery in a series of unfinished cinder block and tin-roofed structures and rooms. It’s easy to cringe when you see them working, as they are doing everything by hand without much protection.  Their fingers and hands are put on trial daily through their work, and unfortunately they don’t always win so cuts and more severe injuries can be common.

Tagua has historically been used for buttons, chess pieces, pipes, and a myriad of other purposes for centuries and is also called vegetable ivory. Gladys typically uses the tagua to create beads of eccentric shapes and sizes. But they have also dappled in making buttons and even miniature pipes.

A trip to this family workshop is an experience of creative chaos. Any given day can see the family doing half a dozen different steps of the process and the seeds often lay strewn about the yard, out-buildings, workshop, and their jewelry making room in bags, boxes, or just the ground. Colours pop out from every corner, the result of imported Italian dyes that Gladys herself mixes into the exquisite, and unique, tints. Cooking the seeds on a gas-fired outdoor stove for an hour or even eight, the rich colours soak into the seed to create the vibrancy of the final product.

Today, Gladys has expanded her work with natural resources to include pambil and acai palm seeds as well. The designs are intricate, colorful, bold, elaborate, and unique. Pieces that would sell for ten times the cost in the US or UK are mere dollars here. The photos we have are just some snaps of what friends and family purchases and don’t do her work real justice.

In fact, many of the vendors in Quito’s artisanal market or the markets in and around Otavalo buy their beads from Gladys and then sell their jewelry for double the price. It’s best to come to the source and truly experience the way creativity produces something of true and unique beauty.

If you are keen to visit, be sure to give them a call before you go, and send our best!  Jose Luis Toabpanta Quishpe | 0995483580 | joseluiselbrand@gmail.com

:: cascada de peguche ::

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It rains a fair bit in Ecuador.  Small streams are frequently torrents of water, thus leading to many waterfalls.  Most are hidden well out of site in the jungles and cloud forests, but some, like the Cascada de Peguche near Otavalo, are quite accessible.

The Cascada de Peguche is not a large waterfall, only a mere 20 metres or so, but there is an intensity to the water that is impressive.  And with usually only a handful of visitors it is quite a tranquil place amongst the trees.

We have been pleasantly impressed by the number of Ecuadorians who get out and enjoy the tourist sites, both natural and cultural, within their country.  On most of our visits to Peguche there were only a couple of dozen people around, enjoying leisurely walks and the falls.

During Carnival, however, we were among a thousand or more people – all of them spraying espuma (coloured shaving cream) and throwing water balloons at everyone else.  It was a very festive atmosphere but not at all conducive to quiet contemplation of nature or staying dry!

That aside, it is a lovely area with a nice easy hike through towering eucalyptus trees – at least one of which is 100 years old – along side a lovely stream.  It is very family and pet friendly, and you can find a few local vendors outside the entrance selling trinkets, souvenirs and local delicacies.

There are some small pools below the falls that are ritually important for the local Kichwa community.  Every year before the Inti Raymi Sun God Festival on June 21, people come and cleanse themselves in order to prepare spiritually for the celebrations.  I imagine that is quite a busy day as well, but more culturally significant and probably less chaotic than the espuma fights during Carnival!

All in all you can’t go wrong with a little side trip to Peguche if you are in Otavalo. The place really is beautiful and there are also some impressive traditional weaving workshops in the town itself that are well worth a stop.

:: crater sacrifice ::

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Standing in a rickety old ceramic pot perched above a cliff would not have been a great idea in pre-colombian times. At the time, the inhabitants of the area around Laguna Cuicocha thought sacrifices were necessary to appease the gods. Now the rickety pot stands atop a commanding view of the crater filled lake Cuicocha and Cotacachi volcano towering above it.

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The lake is completely self-contained within the crater created by a massive eruption a little over 3000 years ago. The lake gets its name from the two small islands shaped like guinea pigs or cuy.

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The crater and area still hold sacred importance to the indigenous people and a large Inti Raymi or sun god festival is held every year on the summer solstice. The ritual baths are used and faux sacrificial ceremonies are held as well.

A short drive up from the leather making town of Cotacachi, Cuicocha stands on the very southeastern edge of the Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve. A hiking trail rings the crater’s rim and along the way there are many lovely places to stand and contemplate the natural beauty of the world.

The weather invariably didn’t fully cooperate to display the occasionally snow covered peak of Cotacachi everytime, but it was always a wonderful excursion in order to sacrifice our guests, figuratively of course.

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And just for fun, here are a few of those we sacrificed over the two years in Ecuador…

 

:: imbabura ::

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Up.  Then up some more.  Then straight up.  That is roughly how I would describe climbing Imbabura.

By its very nature mountain climbing involves going up, but this mountain is not like the rolling inclines of Pichincha.  No, it is a knock you in the lungs, step by step, assault from the moment you get out of the car.  But it’s truly stunning and well worth the climb!

The weather was beautiful and sunny to start as we slowly climbed up through the paramo with sweeping views of the valley and Ibarra below.  However Imbabura is infamous for inclement weather on the top and before long the clouds rolled down the flanks of the mountain and grey misty conditions became our reality.

This didn’t deter us in the least, in fact it was rather magical to climb through the ever rockier landscape with swirling clouds all around us.  Sudden reveals of steep, rocky descents were slightly off putting to our good friend Matt with his fear of heights, but they did keep us on our toes!

The climbing got a bit harder and more technical towards the top and with an increasingly restless toddler on our backs, we took the wise and well-considered decision to cut short our ascent just shy of the peak.  It had been a good, but tough, climb and we all really enjoyed the day out on the mountain.

:: living in the shadow ::

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Ecuador is a country of volcanos.  Tall ones, extinct ones, and iconic ones.  From Quito they are visible in every direction and they truly capture the imagination.  For the beauty and majesty of spotting a distant volcano on the horizon, there is something truly spectacular about living literally underneath a nearly 16,000 foot active volcano.

Pichincha stands ever-present above the city and is impossible to ignore in your comings and goings.  The city stretches up its lower flanks and has repeatedly been showered in ash throughout the centuries – most recently in 1999.  The ever changing clouds and light playing off the expansive mountainside give texture to the shifting atmosphere around the city.  And if the natural beauty wasn’t enough, there is the historical significance of the location as well.

On 24 May 1822, a small battle on the slopes of Pichincha between the Royalist Spanish army and the army of independent Gran Colombia, which was a pan-Andean alliance, proved to be a pivotal turning point in the history of the independence movement of South America.  Fought at 3,500 metres above sea level and lasting mere hours, the decisive engagement permitted the independent forces to control Quito and therefore united the three areas of Quito, Cuenca and Guayaquil under the independent banner of Gran Colombia.  Eight years later those three city-states would merge into the newly independent nation of Ecuador.

The historical significance is sometimes lost in the sheer grandeur of the place, but it bares thinking about as you pass the sheer slopes, thick paramo grasses, and unforeseen gullies on your way up the volcano in the cable car.  In mere minutes the TeleferiQo will take you more than 1,000 metres up in elevation and deposit you over 4,000 metres above sea level.  There, if you are lucky to have a clear day, you are treated to truly panoramic views of Quito and a dozen, often snowcapped, volcanos on the horizon.

Bring your layers, as the wind whips across the open expanse, and your sunglasses, as the sun is extra intense.  Then, wander up to the various viewing locations to see the entire 2.2 million person city spread out below.  It is an incomparable view down, but then you turn around and see the rocky outcropping of Ruku Pichincha still another 700 metres above you.

Pichincha is one massive volcano that actually split itself into two separate summits – named Wawa (Kichwa for baby or child) and Ruku (Kichwa for elder).  Wawa is the higher peak by almost 100 metres, but Ruku is the more easily accessible with a trail leading up directly from the TeleferiQo station.

The trail up Ruku is pretty straightforward with a series of short, steep climbs over the paramo grasses until you reach the rocky face.  Skirting the Paso del Muerte (Pass of Death), the trail leads to a wonderfully energy sapping scree slope before the final scramble over the terraced rock face to the summit.

We have summited Ruku twice – once just the two of us with Mosa and the second time with Piper on our backs.  It is not a mountain to be taken lightly as weather conditions can change quickly from lovely to atrocious, but with a good amount of fitness and sensible caution, it is one of the easier climbs of the higher peaks.  In fact, it is frequently used as an acclimatisation climb by people with plans to climb the highest peaks in Ecuador.

Our climbs really couldn’t have been much different – with lovely mostly sunny conditions the first time and cloud the second time.  And I mean cloud, because we were climbing in the cloud for the last parts.  It gave the summit a very ephemeral feel and a sense that you were literally alone in the middle of the sky.

We have been up the TeleferiQo with numerous visitors for everything from a quick look around the views near the top station to rather arduous hikes through the paramo.  Every time is a little different and unfortunately only once, when Cora was up with friends, have all the volcanos, including Chimborazo 140km away, been visible.  We hope to have at least one more chance to see that expansive view before we depart, but with the schizophrenic Andean weather we will just have to wait and see!

In the meantime, we will enjoy the views of Pichincha with snow, cloud, and sun from Quito.

:: a city garden ::

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Nestled within the expansive space of Quito’s quintessential city park, Parque Carolina, sits an oasis of magnificent biodiversity at the Jardín Botánico de Quito.  This little gem of a garden offers a glimpse into the awe-inspiring biodiversity of Ecuador.

Ecuador offers some of the greatest biodiversity in the world for its size – including a whopping 16% of all bird species on Earth!  Everywhere you travel is a new biome or micro-climate offering new flora and fauna to observe.  Obviously most people flock to the Galapagos to marvel at the endemic species that led Darwin to crystallise his thoughts on evolution.  However the rainforest areas in the east of the country offer a dizzying array of diversity hotspots.

Yasuni National Park, for example, is widely considered one of the most diverse locations in the world – certainly for its size.  The numbers are hard to comprehend, but it has more amphibians than the US and Canada combined, it has one-third of all bird species in the Amazon River basin, and a phenomenal 100,000 insect species!  All that in just one part of the Amazon region.

The Andes spine of the country would seemingly offer less variety, but with the paramo regions above 4,000 metres, lush river valleys, and pockets of cloud forests along both cordilleras, there are wonderful little areas to explore and a plethora of plant life.  Overall there are about seven biomes in Ecuador across four microclimates, making each different region a unique experience.

For anyone who doesn’t have time to properly explore this ecological powerhouse, the Botanic Garden in Quito is a good place to get a snippet of the diversity.  They have done a great job of bringing in plant and tree species from the different biomes – even though the altitude and climate in Quito does not naturally support all these species.  You can wander through the towering trees of the Amazon region and explore the diversity of the cloud forests within mere metres.

One of the truly impressive areas of the gardens is the orchid house.  Orchids are prolific here in Ecuador with over 4,000 classified species of orchid in Ecuador, including over 1,700 endemic to this magnificently diverse country.  The variety of these elegant flowers is stunning to behold.  We really needed our botanist friend and flower expert Stacy to come with us and help us to identify and marvel over these extraordinarily beautiful species.

You could spend a lifetime exploring every nook and cranny of Ecuador and not see every plant and animal on offer.  So the next time you are wandering through Quito on a short trip, make a stop at this lovely little ecological oasis to better appreciate the explosive diversity of this country.

 

:: pacho’s finca ::

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The rich volcanic soil of Ecuador is only half the formula according to Pacho.  A man fully wedded to the soil, process, and fertiliser of his organic farm knows a thing or two about what it takes to grow exquisite produce in Ecuador.  Twice a year he opens up his finca in Pifo – out by the Quito Airport – for the curious to come and see the operation and hear him spin his tales of success.

Pacho is a super passionate individual who can talk for hours about the most minute detail of the organic process.  In fact, his favourite topic seems to be the process required to develop the best fertiliser and he talked about that at his huge compost pile for at least an hour the day we were there!  He was one of the first organic producers in Ecuador and still leads training for those trying to emulate his success.

The garden is enormous with rows upon rows of kale, spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini, fruit trees and more.  All are interspersed with grasses and weeds which help keep the bugs at bay – a nice little tip we picked up.

He brings in local vendors selling jam, bread, pottery, honey, and beer that share his love of the naturally homemade.  It is quite a scene and whilst we couldn’t fully invest the time to learn the inner workings of a compost pile, we came away with a wonderful appreciation for what is possible and the true joys of a natural garden – something that we love to replicate in our own small ways.

Find out more about Pacho’s Finca at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qC5Ig3T4NY

Check out his open house – Casa Abierta opportunity twice a year

Finca Orgánica Chaupi Molino – +593 99 824 00 47