The Andes are so high, and so long, and such a profound component of South America – like a backbone for a continent - that much in Ecuador seems to depend on which slope you happen to be on. Cuisine seems to change by elevation. Culture is determined by elevation too. And the biological world in particular seems to be ruled by the slopes.
“I notice you are always referring to the Eastern and Western slope,” I ask Gabriel, “so that’s how they refer to things all up and down the Andes?”
“No, not at all,” he says. “It’s much more complex than that, so it depends where you are.”
From Quito, we drive southeast on a modern road towards the Papallacta Pass, where the road begins to slope downwards towards the flat Amazon Basin. At the top, we veer off into the Cayambe-Coca Reserve via a dirt road and ascend to an elevation of 14,000 feet. Gabriel parks his truck next to a series of cell phone antennas. The security guard for the antennas joins us, and we walk uphill on a small stone path. From the top, we can see mountains in every direction.
The landscape here looks like a coral reef on land, and also like an alpine swamp. Its called Páramo, and as an ecosystem, it exists only here in the Northern Andes. Windswept, barren, rocky, but not devoid of life.
Guango River, near the Papallacta Pass
facebook
twitter