Horseback Riding & Culture of the Ecuadorian Highlands

In the last episode I hiked the famed volcano Cotopaxi which sits within the beautiful Cotopaxi National Park. Right outside its border are numerous working farms called haciendas which are the perfect place to unwind and learn about some of the local culture and tradition and that's exactly where I headed next. Here in the Ecuadorian highlands you find a lot of horses and cows. One of the traditions here is the chagras aka the Ecuadorian cowboys and today we're going to experience it firsthand. Now the chagra ride in chaps which are known locally as zamaro. They're made from llama fur and they also wear a traditional scarf hat and poncho as well as boots. Their horses are usually equipped with comfortable western saddles that feature saddle padding and a rope that's called a beta that is used by the chagra as a lasso and I got to be an honorary chagra on my visit here which meant getting dressed in traditional attire and heading out into the highlands. Horses were brought to Ecuador by the Spanish conquistadors and ever since then the chagra people have been using them to work the land here and raise cattle. Before that they used llamas and alpacas which used to be wild here in Ecuador. A hacienda El Porvenir actually conserves a lot of their land. They have more than 900 acres here. A lot of it is set aside for conservation and the rest they use so that their horses and their cows can run free when they're not being used. They use the cows for cheese and milk and they even grow potatoes at the farm as well. The chagra are known as the spirit of the highlands and they're an integral part of every hacienda here in this part of Ecuador. They're famous for their exceptional horseman skills and their unwavering dedication to the horses and as long as there's been haciendas in the Andean landscape there has been chagra. It was super awesome to be able to go out riding with one of them and experience this area on horseback. The chagra are in charge of the livestock at the haciendas and it's a way of life that's been passed down through generations. The cows and bulls here are much like reindeer in the arctic, wild and free which means sometimes you run into an angry male bull while you're out in the pastures so you definitely have to watch your surroundings when you're out here riding. There are hundreds of acres to explore and so much green. It's just such a phenomenally beautiful area. My guide also took us out to the guardians of Cotopaxi which is a wooden monument emboldening the chagra and the llamas of the land. We are here at the guards of Cotopaxi. They represent the mountain and as you can see there is a llama, a man and a woman. So right now we're having a traditional tea here that's really good for For avid lovers of riding horseback you can actually book a several day trip on horseback out into the highlands of Ecuador exploring more of Cotopaxi National Park and I would highly recommend it if you want to do some horsepacking. If I had had more time I definitely would have joined one of these tours. One of my favorite things about getting to stay in a place like this at a hacienda or working ranch is getting to be up close with so many animals. They had so many horses here but they also had llamas and alpacas and my favorite little creature to hang out with was a baby bull named Junior. He had been abandoned by his mother and the owner of the hacienda kind of adopted him and he was like a puppy dog. He loved getting scratched under the and I really think he thought he was a little cat because he would just come and follow me around the ranch and if I could have taken him home I certainly would have. The other animals that you'll see a lot of not just here at the ranch but throughout the highlands are llamas and alpacas. They're actually related and they look pretty similar. I had a hard time telling them apart but alpacas generally are a bit smaller than llamas and more closely resemble their cousins called which you can see roaming wildly in some of the mountains as well. Now llamas and alpacas were actually domesticated about 6,000 years ago by the local Quechua people and other indigenous groups like the Inca that lived in Ecuador and Peru thousands of years ago. One thing I cannot get enough of in Ecuador is the food. It's fresh, it's local, and it's delicious but I can't take the restaurants home so right now I'm at Hacienda El Porvenir with Lucy who is going to teach me how to make traditional Ecuadorian cheese empanadas. Ecuador certainly has a ton of unique foods and if you're thinking to yourself but hey I've had empanadas in other places around the world yes you're right they actually didn't originate in Ecuador but they've been around in Ecuador from around the 15th or 16th century when the Spanish conquistadors came to South America and brought over these recipes. So here in the highlands they're actually one of the staples of pretty much every dish. They come as a side dish, you can also get them as an appetizer, and they're just a great little snack. I think doing a cooking class in places that you travel is such a great way to learn about the local culture and one of the unique things about Ecuador is that because they import very little things as far as food and beverages go pretty much everything is super local, super fresh, and very unique in the sense of how things taste compared to what I'm used to in America. It was so refreshing getting to taste all the local fruits and vegetables and really the unique dishes of each different region of this beautiful country. One of the things we're making to go along with our empanadas today is an Ecuadorian moonshine and you make that with the naranjilla which is kind of like a tomato but it tastes nothing like that it's actually quite sweet they use it in teas here and a lot of other things as well. So she's gonna leave that to simmer for about eight to ten minutes let the fruit and the cinnamon really infuse itself into the water. And this has been my favorite thing to drink here while in Ecuador it's delicious. Compare. I just asked Lucy here what her favorite dish was she actually grew up in the area and they grow a lot of potatoes here so her favorite dish is actually potatoes but fresh fresh fresh from the ground at harvest time mixed with some local grains some local beans and covered with queso which is cheese it sounds absolutely delicious. I'm not sure if I'm getting better or worse this looks like an old British guy wearing a wig. Now to make the sauce. Just getting some sauce ready because the empanadas are in the oil you want to start at a really high heat to get the oil ready put the empanadas in and then make sure you're turning them constantly so they don't burn. All right moment of truth a little bit of sauce. It's delicious. My time here in the highlands wasn't over quite yet. Cotopaxi had just been a warm-up hike for what I was about to try and conquer next.