Hiking the Andes in Ecuador's Parque Nacional El Cajas

On Tuesday, December 31, while Kathy, Matt, Weina and William bopped around Cuenca, David accompanied Katie and her cousin Megan on a day of hiking in Ecuador's Parque Nacional El Cajas. The national park occupies over 600 square miles of territory in the Andes mountains, midway along the Pan-American Highway between Guayaquil and Cuenca, Ecuador.  The name "Cajas" is derived from the Quichua word "cassa" (meaning "gateway to the snowy mountains") or "caxa" (meaning "cold").  The Spanish word "cajas" means "boxes."

Our guide, Milton, is a native Cuencan who is part Spanish and part Quechuan, a group of indigenous peoples who have lived in the area for centuries.  Quechuans are descended from a variety of original peoples including the Cañari, and then the Inca who, having failed to conquer the Cañari, merged with them in the late 1400's through intermarriage.  Milton is college educated and majored in tourism.  He has guided in the Cuenca area his entire professional career.  Here's a photo of Milton:

Milton and his driver took us to three different areas of the park, which are shown below:  Lake Llavuico, shown in the map below marked with a circled "B"; the summit at Tres Cruces, circled on the map below and marked with a "C"; and an extended hike starting at Lake Toreadora and extending eastward back to the Pan-American Highway near Lake Caballo Shayana, circled and marked with an "A."

Our first stop was at Lake Llaviuco, also called Zorrocucho.  "Zorrocucho" is a blend of Spanish and Quechuan.  "Zorro" is Spanish for "fox," and "cucho" is Quechuan for "corner." Thus, the lake is known as "fox's corner" for all the foxes that inhabit the area.

The lake is in a striking alpine setting.  To the northwest of the lake are the remains of an old German brewery built in the 1930's and abandoned with World War II, which you can see in the background beyond the lake in this photo:

Milton led us on a 1-mile hike around the lake, noting the unique flora, including many medicinal plants.  As we hiked, he described some of the traditional indigenous medicinal practices, many conducted by shamans.  His grandmother engaged in this practice, and he recounted a fascinating story of his grandmother curing his 18-month old son using a shaman practice of waving and egg over the infant to suck out the bad spirits caused by an "evil eye."

After the lake hike, we drove up to the summit of the Inca Trail as it passed through the mountains.  The park includes the summit of the drive from Guayaquil to Cuenca, at a height of over 13,000 feet, located at a place called Tres Cruces ("Three Crosses").  The place is so named because of the three large stone crosses erected among piles of granite boulders as a monument to the people who have died in Parque Nacional Cajas:

Historically, people died in passage from the port of Guayaquil to the sierras. Now people die going on long hikes, getting lost in the fog and rain with poorly marked trails and freezing.  The crosses are located on the ancient Inca Trail at a traditional resting spot at the summit of this difficult crossing.

This day, we rode up to the summit by van, and the most dangerous thing we encountered was a group of three llamas, standing near the observation point:

Later on the hike, we learned a little-known fact about llamas:  they all poop in one spot.  I guess this is to avoid fouling any more of their feeding ground than they have to.  Here is an excellent example of congregate llama scat.  Looks like someone collected a bunch of deer droppings to me:

We all paused for a photo at the observation point at Tres Cruces before jumping back in the van to drive down to our embarcation point for our hike at Lake Toreadora.  Our group included (l-r) David, Katie, Megan, a family John, Ryan and Jan (see more about them below), and a Japanese tourist.

Our story of John, Jan and Ryan starts on our first night in Cuenca, Sunday, December 29.  The Philadelphia Eagles were in a football wild card game that night, and Katie was looking for a place to watch the game.  As it turned out, the bar-restaurant in our hotel, the Hotel Inca Real, could show the game, and we spent Sunday evening watching the Eagles beat the Cowboys to go on to the playoffs.  A family of three was sitting near us, and Katie struck up a conversation with them before we arrived after dinner.  They are from Portland, Oregon, and so David had much in common with them from the start.  They were interested in our vagabond RV lifestyle, and we spent the entire game chatting with them about their travels and our RV experiences.  Ryan was a precocious young man, very cheerful and outgoing, and he participated energetically in the conversation.  We bade them a reluctant farewell when the Eagles game ended, and thought that that was the end of that.

Not true.  The morning of this tour on December 31, we hopped into the bus outside of the hotel, which drove on to pick up the other participants in the tour.  When the bus made its next stop, who should hop on but Jan, John and Ryan!  This was fabulous!  Suddenly our little merry band had doubled in size, and we had a chance to spend the whole day's trek with people we already knew!

The hike for about 2 miles down from Lake Toreadora was spectacular.  This whole section of the park is filled with glacial tarns, formed in the last Ice Age.  The lakes feed each other as streams feed rainwater down the watersheds to Cuenca, which receives all its drinking water from this part of the mountains.  On the Guayaquil, or western, side of the pass, all water flows to the Pacific; on this, the eastern side, all water flows to the Amazon, which eventually empties into the Atlantic Ocean.  Four different rivers fall from the mountains and flow through Cuenca.  Two of the four rivers of Cuenca originate from Cajas, the Tomebamba and Yanuncay, and Lake Llaviuco (Zorrocucho) which was the location of our first hike of the day, is part of the drainage of one of those two rivers.

Here is a photo of the landscape at the beginning of our hike:

Our trail was the "Camino de Garcia Moreno," which is identified by this trail marker with Lake Toreadora in the background:

Even on this short hike, we passed numerous tarns, and each was lovelier than the last:

We hiked through an old-grown Quinoa forest.   From there, we got a view of our destination:  the furthest lake in the distance:

Quinoa is a tree resembling the California manzanita.  It is to be distinguished from quinua, which is the grain.  Americans have mistakenly spelled the name of the grain as "quinoa" but that is, in fact, the spelling of the name of the tree rather than the grain.  Here are Katie, David and Megan, lost in the quinoa bosque, which Ryan said looks just like the forest in the "Hobbit" movie:

Our merry band trooped over the countryside, conquering hill and dale:

Ryan found a magnificent boulder to conquer:

The greens and blues and the big sky with majestic clouds were awesome:

Here is another:

And another:

Having trekked all morning, we earned our lunch, which we heartily enjoyed at "Los Calles Del Cajas" a restaurant situate right on the Pan-American Highway, just a few miles from our trailhead.  Our lunch consisted of traditional Ecuadorian food, including grilled and poached trout, and condiments of lima beans and hominy.  Delicioso!

By the time our bus returned to the hotel in Cuenca, we were tired and well satisfied with having explored the Ecuadorian Andes.  Milton, our guide, added immeasurably to the experience by describing the history, geography and ecology of the park.  So great!