Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands - Geodyssey

Ecuador ê GUIDE
A quarter of Ecuador’s population are
indigenous. The largest of the indigenous
‘nations’ is the Quichua, who are spread in
various groupings throughout the highlands
and in Peru (where the spelling is ‘Quechua’).
Quichua is their language of choice, though
most are bilingual in Quichua and Spanish.
Traditional costume is used in the
highlands to show one’s standing as a true
runa (Quichua for ‘person’) and to denote the
local community to which you belong.
Different styles, designs, and colours of
ponchos and blouses, skirts and trousers,
belts and hair bands are worn by the men and
women of each highland community. Hats
too show where you are from. Felt trilbies
trimmed with peacock feathers are favoured
by men and women around Quilotoa. Around
Riobamba, Cañaris wear straw bonnets of the
type our grandmothers wore to school, while
their neighbours, the Puruwas, choose white
straw bowlers. The Salasaca, in the south,
wear broad brimmed white hats with ponchos
and shawls dyed the darkest blue-black in
mourning for the Inca Atahualpa.
How you wear your clothes is important
too: a shawl tied with a knot indicates an
unmarried woman, whereas a clasp or ornate
pin shows she is married.
Keeping up appearances nourishes a craft
industry that extends through every village
and almost every household. You will see
ladies spinning yarn by hand, even while
carrying a load of fire-wood along a mountain
trail. Skeins of dyed wool dry on washing
lines, sheaves of toquilla straw for hats hang
to dry by the road, and home weavers work
looms of uniquely Ecuadorian design.
All this creativity can be seen, and bought,
in markets throughout the highlands, in
different villages according to the day of the
week. It’s a time for locals to socialise and
catch up on news, as well as browse colourful
displays of textiles, clothes and hats, bulging
sacks of maize, quinoa, lima beans and
potatoes, piles of fruit, chilli peppers and
spices, and useful assortments of buckets,
rope and utensils.
It is more than likely that at some stage your
visit will coincide with a village fiesta, may be
to celebrate a day in the traditional calendar–
perhaps a solstice or equinox, a Catholic holy
day or saint’s day, or a local wedding. Each is
celebrated at length and with fervour.
Cuenca and the southern
Andes
Cuenca is a very attractive and historic
city with strong echoes of its colonial and
prosperous early republican past. To its north,
Ingapirca is the most important Incan site
in Ecuador, and Cajas National Park offers
wonderful highland landscapes for walkers. A
string of villages, each with its own heritage of
traditional crafts, lies among the warm valleys
south-east of the city.
Further south, a jumble of much older
mountains replaces the volcanic peaks and
high plains of the central Andes and makes
life hard and travel slow. Well off the beaten
track, Podocarpus National Park attracts
dedicated birdwatchers and the small town of
Vilcabamba on a back road to Peru was once
reputed to hold the secret of eternal youth.
Cuenca
Capital of the south, Cuenca is a comfortable
rather reserved city with a well-preserved
and restored colonial centre that has earned
it UNESCO World Heritage Site status.
Its cobbled streets, colonial churches and
whitewashed buildings echo those of Quito,
on a smaller scale, with a quieter provincial
air, and at a lower altitude. Situated in a fertile
valley at the confluence of four rivers, it enjoys
the perpetual spring climate of the highlands.
Cuenca dates back to AD 500, and was a
notable Cañari settlement when the Incas
expanded north from Peru to establish their
city of ‘Tomebamba’ as one of the very
finest of its day. But all was soon laid low in
the Incan civil war between rival brothers
Atahualpa and Huascar. The Spanish rebuilt
the city in a fine renaissance style, with
well-laid out streets and plazas. Cuenca’s
architecture, much of which dates from
the 18th century, was ‘modernized’ in the
economic prosperity of the 19th century.
The streets of present-day Cuenca are filled
with the life of a provincial capital, with a
host of small shops and colourful markets.
Fronting the central plaza is the rather
splendid ‘New’ Cathedral, started in 1885.
Its large blue-tiled domes, towers, arches
and buttresses present an impressive sight,
and contain below them a large nave that
addresses one of the most ornate gilded altars
one could wish to see, spangled by the light
from windows lavishly furnished with stained
glass. At the other end of the square is the
Old Cathedral (El Sagrario), a much more
humble building with whitewashed walls
(incorporating some Incan stonework) and a
single bell tower.
Many of Cuenca’s more important
buildings are made in the colonial baroque
style using locally quarried marble. The
houses of the well-to-do, mostly dating from
Cuenca’s heyday, reserve the best of their
charms to graceful inner courtyards. The
wealth of those times is evident not only
from the size of the houses but also their
interior décor: one private mansion boasts
wall-coverings of stamped enamelled tin plate
specially imported from Europe to resemble
the embossed leather that was fashionable at
the time.
The boom times of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century came partly from the
export of quinine, harvested from the bark
of the local cascarilla tree for the treatment
for malaria, and partly from the Panama
hat industry. Small workshops in the town
apply the final stages of production to semifinished
hats drawn from the ‘craft villages’
(see below), and export the results all over the
world. The trade route first passed through
Panama from which the hats took their
name in Europe, a sleight that still rankles. If
Panamas are your style then spend the extra to
buy a superfino that can be rolled up in your
luggage but will spring back into perfect shape
for the Members Pavilion at Lord’s.
12 GEODYSSEY | ECUADOR T: 020 7281 7788 www.geodyssey.co.uk/ecuador