Crafting a Unique Cultural Journey Through Ecuador

I’m 9,350 feet above sea level, surrounded by the Andes Mountains, and in a country at the center of the world, on the equator.  Ecuador spans approximately 109,000 square miles, roughly the size of Nevada. The small country with an outsized contribution to astronomy, cartography, and evolutionary science, ranks as one of the world’s top ten most biodiverse countries. I’m searching for serendipitous experiences with Ecuador’s people and places, connecting through the shared language of craft.

Each day unfolds as a mystery decoded by clues that lead me to Ecuador’s safekeepers of traditions on this Hero’s Journey, orchestrated by Art Experiences Ecuador. The Hero’s Journey connects travelers with indigenous artisans and craftspeople working in cities and mountain villages to preserve and promote their ancestral skills and traditions. It’s an invitation to explore the connections between culture and creativity to better understand worldviews, values, traditions, and rituals through craft. 

“For those travelers willing to connect with artisans and learn crafts, we recommend keeping an open mind and respecting the traditions and knowledge that support their identity construction,” says Monica Paez Espinosa, my travel guide with Art Experiences Ecuador.

Quito, Ecuador’s capital, is the launching point for my Hero’s Journey, which melds the element of surprise with curated visits to artisan workshops participating in a micro-entrepreneurship program. “It’s like a treasure hunt because we create the circumstances for you to have a transformational travel experience and ascend to a higher level of consciousness,” explains Sebastian Vergara, CEO of Art Hotels Ecuador.

Art Hotels Ecuador cultivates and trains these artisan entrepreneurs to capitalize on their skills and earn a living wage. “The idea is to dignify and sustain the country’s culture bearers with fair payments, so every entrepreneur makes a living from their skills and ancestral knowledge,” Monica explains.

My first clue leads me to mask-masker Alberto Avila, owner of El Caretero. Alberto handmakes paper masks deeply rooted in indigenous, colonial, and Afro-Ecuadorian cultures. Ecuadorians wear these whimsical masks for celebrations, spiritual rituals, and socio-political commentary.

I’m about to discover the cathartic power of mask-making as Alberto instructs me to pick out an unpainted paper mache face that fits my energy and personality.  He asks me a series of thought-provoking questions, and I paint my answers on the mask using abstract designs. What begins to manifest is an unexpected portal to my thoughts and emotions. After painting my feelings, Alberto tells me to stomp on my mask and release all those thoughts holding me back. He then sets the mask on fire and yells, “Nunca mas!” which means never again in Spanish. I repeat: “Nunca mas” and feel a powerful emotional release and calming peacefulness. The walls of Avila’s workshop display dozens of faces staring back, mythological beings from Andean cultures, and colorful devil masks that symbolize Ecuadorian resistance against colonialism and assimilation. The masks embody energy and stories that forge an emotional connection with Ecuador’s history and heritage.

Quito’s historic center is one of Ecuador’s five UNESCO World Heritage sites. A stroll around the city’s historic streets in their original layout conveys a sense of 16th-century daily life, populated with churches, convents, landmark buildings, and public squares. Quito’s historic center holds some of the best-preserved examples of Colonial and Baroque architecture in Latin America, including the Church of La Compañía de Jesús, San Francisco Church and Convent, and Basilica del Voto Nacional.

As I explore Quito, the towering Virgin of Quito watches over me, standing 148 feet tall and comprised of more than 4000 aluminum pieces.  She looks southward, and I’ve seen her from every vantage point except North, perhaps unconsciously acknowledging an Ecuadorian superstitious belief that if you go North, the Virgin can’t watch over you.

Otavalo sits approximately 8,307 feet above sea level in the Andean highlands, where volcanoes and lakes blanket the landscape. The city is home to a concentration of Kichwa people, the largest indigenous group in Ecuador. My guide, Kevin Burga, is Kichwa, instantly identifiable by his signature long hair worn in a braid. The Kichwas trace their ancestry back to the Incas, who once ruled the region until the Spanish conquest of 1533.

The Kichwa are skilled weavers making textiles for commercial and cultural value. Weavers Josefina and Manuel Morales, a husband-and-wife team, are one of the region’s retail success stories. Their workshop, Equator Face, makes products, including luggage straps, bracelets, and blankets for retail sale, and they teach their skills.  On the morning I arrive, Manuel is spooling colored yarn while Josefina weaves using a backstrap loom attached to her body. Andes Indigenous communities use this ancient portable weaving method to create intricate, colorful patterns.

Manuel shows me how to spool yarn by spinning the wheel with one hand and threading the colored wool with my other hand. Josefina teaches me how to thread the looms, stringing the colored yarn around these large wheels. It’s a dance that requires fluid motions alternating up and down without tangling the yarn. It takes up to 400 passes to set up the spool for the loom. They teach me to weave using a foot-pedal-powered loom following a numbered pattern for each distinctive design. With each pass, Manuel pushes a wooden lever to lock the thread in place before changing the direction of the following thread pass.

Weaving requires years to master at the pace and output of my mentors Josefina and Manuel, who weave dozens of belts, ponchos, and bracelets daily to meet the demands of their retail business.  I find the entire process challenging and frustrating. I keep losing track of which numbered foot pedal to press; however, with patience, a pattern emerges, resulting in a bracelet I will wear with a smile and admiration for this ancestral skill.

From traditions to the table, Ecuadorian culture bearers also express their ancestral roots through cuisine and cooking techniques. My next clue alludes to this fact. Kevin hands me a little wooden spoon known as a “cuchara” and a note that says, “The Gods grant the harvest bliss by the fire of the tulpa; you’ll need this.” 

A dirt road leads to an adobe home on the outskirts of Otavalo that doubles as a restaurant and teaching kitchen. Claudia and her young daughter welcomed me to Kawsaymi, in their native Kichwa language, and offered a welcome drink of fermented corn called Chicha. Claudia invites me to wrap my hair in the customary cooking scarf and put on an apron for a cooking lesson using ancestral techniques and ingredients in her garden. Together, we pick herbs to make chicken chimichurri, as Claudia shares generational knowledge about herbs and medicinal plants.

We prepare the ingredients in her modern kitchen and head into an adobe room to cook the chicken using a tulpa, a large metal pot over an open flame. Guinea pigs share the same space as the tulpa, scampering around as Claudia throws them scraps from our meal preparation. I thought it odd that I was cooking in a pit populated with guinea pigs until I learned that the guinea pig is an Ecuadorian delicacy. Claudia fattens them up to serve up in future meals.  My final task was hand-grinding corn on the millstone to make sweet empanadas. The garden-to-table cooking lesson ends with lunch in Claudia’s restaurant, open to the public by appointment. I savor each bite with a new appreciation for the time, technique, and manual labor required of Kichwa cuisine. 

I say goodbye to Claudia as she hands me another clue, a small piece of bamboo with the riddle, “Deep in the forest, I was grown, and now music is heard when I am blown.” I surmise that music lessons are in my future, although I can’t figure out what the piece of reed symbolizes.

I head to Peguche, a short drive from Otavalo, known for Andean music and the production of traditional instruments, including pan flutes crafted of reed. Murals depicting musicians line the streets, paying homage to the region’s legacy. Segundo Lema welcomes me inside Taita Gundo Casa De Musica Andina, filled with all sizes and configurations of reed flutes.

Segundo asks me to produce my bamboo clue and shows me how to make a Kukuyai whistle. I glue on a mouthpiece, wrap the whistle in colored yarn, and attempt to play. The Kukuyai chirps in my hands; however, Segundo can blow a beautiful melody into its mouthpiece.

The accomplished musician is a master of many Andrean musical instruments, including panpipes, bamboo flute-like instruments, chajchas, rattles made from goat hooves, and the bombo, a drum made from hollowed-out logs and animal skins. Before we say goodbye, Segundo performs several traditional Andean songs, including Sanjuanito, a happy Ecuadorian rhythm played during celebrations. He hands me the next clue of my trip, a feather with a note that reads, “Has a tail but does not move, has wings that do not spread, its net does not catch insects, but it does protect against certain dead.” 

Many rituals and traditions are a fusion of cultures, such as the dreamcatcher, a traditional Native American craft that Ecuadorians adopted for protection.  Many Ecuadorians hang dreamcatchers in their households to trap negative energy and attract positive energy.

Monica and Nayia are mother and daughter of Kichwa origin and entrepreneurs who own Arte Nayia in Peguche. The dreamcatcher store and workshop provide jobs for many local women in the Kichwa community who harvest natural materials used in the craft, including willow vines for circular frames, feathers, and beads. They taught me how to make a dreamcatcher weaving a net to catch negative energy and send it through the hole in the middle. Net stitching is delicate work requiring a lot of patience to position each stitch so that the net snaps into place after pulling the final thread.  To finish my dreamcatcher, I pick out energy stones to attach to hanging feathers that disperse the good energy. No two dream catchers are alike, as evidenced by the variety hanging from the ceiling, but they share the same essential elements as a protective amulet.

My Hero’s Journey continues in the Andean Highlands of Southern Ecuador as I head to Cuenca, 193 miles south of Quito. Cuenca is known as “the Athens of Ecuador” because of its rich intellectual and artistic history. The city’s historic center also holds a UNESCO World Heritage Site designation.

My guide, Wilson Galarza, takes me to Parque Calderón, which anchors the historic heart of Cuenca. Rising above colonial buildings, the blue domes of the New Cathedral of Cuenca serve as my visual compass while exploring Calle Larga, which is lined with cafés, restaurants, bars, and artisan shops.  The Romanesque and Gothic-style church, built in 1885, serves as a city landmark and a muse to many artists.

People-watching in Cuenca’s historic center reveals a popular accessory many Ecuadorians wear daily: a straw hat to shield from the harsh sun at the equator. Ecuadorians call them toquilla hats; however, the rest of the world knows them as Panama hats. Cuenca is home to thousands of skilled weavers contributing to the city’s claim to fame as the top producer of Panama hats.  Panama hat weaving is recognized as an “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” by UNESCO.

Homero Ortega is one of the country’s largest Panama hat producers and offers public tours of its factory and showroom.  Artisans at the factory offer weaving demonstrations using toquilla straw in various thicknesses. A thinner straw yields a tighter weave and a higher priced, better quality Panama hat.  I go behind the scenes to watch as artisans dye, shape, and style each hat with different embellishments, from bows to bands.  The Panama hat is a symbol of Ecuadorian cultural pride even though it’s named after the country of Panama, where it was first exported and worn by workers constructing the Panama Canal.

As I purchased a Panama hat that spoke to my personality, Wilson handed me a clue inside a small black ceramic pot. It reads: “A reward on the fly, your castle in the sky has been carved out of where the lava lies.”  This riddle completely stumps me until I approach Convención del 45, a Cuenca neighborhood traditionally dedicated to pottery making.

Jose Encalada welcomes me to his workshop, José Encalada & Hijos, in his multigenerational family home. Jose is a master ceramicist known for his ancestral techniques and signature black pottery, using a naturally dyed technique he invented. 

Jose works with clay from the Amazon jungle and demonstrates the traditional way of prepping the clay for the pottery wheel. He swings a large wooden mallet to crush the clay into powder and then mixes the powder with water.  Today, a mechanized grinder does the job for Jose. I’m curious to learn Jose’s trade secret of crafting black pottery, so he offers to show me by firing a red clay bowl at 900 degrees and then burying it in sawdust, where a chemical reaction turns the clay black.  The pottery wheel technique preceding this magic trick-like moment is what I seek to master. 

The following day, I head into the Andes mountains to San Bartolomé, a mountain village in the Andean highlands approximately 19 miles southeast of Cuenca. San Bartolomé is home to Ruta de las Guitarras (“Guitar Route”), a cultural and artisanal designation highlighting the region’s rich tradition of handcrafted guitar-making.

Jose Uyaguari is a 4th generation guitar maker and owner of Taller Uyaguari, a small workshop producing handcrafted guitars from locally sourced wood.  Jose is one of the region’s last guitar makers, a skill becoming obsolete because it’s hard to earn a living. Each guitar requires more than a week of labor as Jose sands the wood into its acoustical properties, crafts the guitar body, and inlays the colorful, intricate designs by hand. He says his profit is approximately $70 a guitar, which makes his craft a labor of love rather than an economically viable endeavor.

 “When we visit the artisans, we always pay them a fee for their time and knowledge. Through tourist visits, we offer a direct selling channel for their products to keep these traditions alive,” Wilson explains.

The US dollar is Ecuador’s official currency, making it convenient for US travelers to purchase handcrafted items in small workshops and markets. I picked out a handcrafted guitar for my son, who plays and performs. It’s one of many items made with meaning by Ecuadorian artisans that I will cherish as family keepsakes.

In Kichwa, the expression of gratitude is “Yupaychani,” meaning “thank you.” I end my Hero’s journey with deep gratitude to Ecuadorians who opened their hearts, homes, and workshops to share their traditions and skills. Ecuadorians are among the most welcoming people I’ve met throughout my international travels. They take great pride in their hospitality, often greeting me with traditional welcome drinks made from local herbs and fruits as part of their customs. Ecuador taught me tangible and unexpected lessons about spirituality, wisdom, and worldviews. I return home, free of preconceived notions and a deeper understanding of Ecuador’s history, heritage, and people.