Travelers can visit a lush mountain retreat in Ecuador’s cloud forest
I can hardly see a thing when we first drive up the winding road that connects Quito to the Yunguilla Reserve, a small protected area located on the northwestern region of Ecuador's volcano-rich Pichincha province. A blanket of fog has obscured the lush, green landscape and set in around my husband and me like pearly gauze. Luckily, a slight figure emerges from the haze: It's Deysi Collaguazo, the community leader who will guide us through it.
Deysi is one of 190 people who live in Yunguilla. She's accustomed to thick, misty, mornings like today — because, after all, this is what life is like in an Andean cloud forest. Yunguilla is perched 8,695 feet above sea level, where the chill of the snow-capped mountains collides with the warmer temperatures of the coastal tropics to produce a constant fog that lurks at canopy level. Leafy trees glisten with fresh condensation, and a persistent rain keeps the soft, pliable ground slick and fertile.
While most travelers to Ecuador puddle-jump toward the dazzling Galapagos Islands, few visitors realize that some of the world's richest biodiversity is hiding an hour from Quito.
Yunguilla is more than a reserve in a celestial setting. Over the past 21 years, it has become a carefully organized example of community-based tourism and entrepreneurship as residents such as Deysi have collectively poured their energy into sustainable projects that generate revenue for all.
Deysi, the head of Yunguilla's tourism efforts, whisks us to the Talhuallullo Lodge, a wooden house that welcomes the 3,800 tourists who visit each year.
In 1995, residents of Yunguilla were contacted by Maquipucuna, a neighboring reserve and foundation that had been pioneering conservation and sustainable efforts to protect the cloud forest, which has been declining in the face of climate change. Maquipucuna's leaders were concerned that loggers and coal workers in Yunguilla were harming the nearby land, so they brought their knowledge of soil fertility, organic gardening and wildlife protection to the community. Maquipucuna also was running a successful eco-lodge, and a few enterprising leaders in Yunguilla thought that they might be able to remediate the environmental damage their jobs had caused by pivoting to ecotourism ventures of their own.
"My father was one of the crazy ones," Deysi tells us, explaining that in 1997, her dad and 15 residents enlisted the help of Maquipucuna and other nonprofit organizations to build the lodge where we're standing. Initially, this two-story structure served as a hostel for Yunguilla's first visitors. But as tourism grew, families began opening up their homes, and the community invested in renovating houses to accommodate guests. On the wall, a map shows the 20 family homes that now double as lodgings, where tourists can stay while hiking to nearby waterfalls, looking for more than 120 species of birds and 150 types of orchids (as well as bears and pumas) and participating in the community's daily activities — which include making cheeses and jams, arts and crafts, and gardening. Deysi points to a small square on the map and tells us that, for the next two days, we'll be staying with her cousin, Julio Collaguazo, and his wife, two daughters and two grandchildren.
Deysi leads the way to Julio's beautiful three-story home, draped in rainbow-colored pendulum flowers that hang from the trees. At the door, Julio's eldest daughter, Estefany, and her friend Diana sit us down for a lunch of warm lentil soup, chicken and rice.
"The kids in the community are really motivated. They study tourism, they study gastronomy, they're learning English. The idea is to apply all of their knowledge eventually," Deysi tells us later.
Our first stop is Yunguilla's fresh-cheese factory. About 15 families tend small cattle farms. Each morning, they bring more than 200 liters of milk into a spacious workroom where two women make 80 batches of cheese a day and, sometimes, a few dozen natural yogurts. A man goes into Quito to sell the products every day and, at the end of the month, Yunguilla's accounting team pays the families for them.
A short walk from the cheese manufacturers, we see two other women standing over industrial-sized blenders that pummel tender berries into rich artisanal jams.
A trio of roosters wakes us up the next morning, and we peer through the curtains from the top level of Julio's house to watch the pre-dawn clouds hover over the valleys. We soon layer up for a day of outdoor adventures that we've planned at Tucanopy, a zip-lining site about 45 minutes away.
The sun-soaked Galapagos and the snowcapped Cotopaxi volcano have made Ecuador a veritable playground for adrenaline junkies, and the companies in the cloud forest have taken note. The region is rife with outfitters that offer aerial activities. At Tucanopy, a young couple has installed six hulking cables that seem to soar into the sky. We spend an hour ripping through the air, taking in the breathtaking cloud forest from 100 meters above.
When we arrive back at the Collaguazos' home, it's time to say goodbye. We trade hugs and take photos on their porch before getting into our car. I can see the family waving in the rearview mirror, but the clouds roll in and hide them within seconds, as if to keep Yunguilla a magical secret until the next guests arrive.