Cuenca & the Southern Andes

The southern highlands were the land of the Cañari, a confederation of peoples who resisted the Inca advance in the late fifteenth century before being absorbed. Tupac Inca Yupanqui built a new city, Tomebamba, on the site of today's Cuenca, and his son Huayna Capac was born there; chroniclers described it as a rival to Cusco. At Ingapirca the Inca built over an older Cañari sanctuary. During the civil war between Atahualpa and Huáscar, Tomebamba was sacked, and many Cañari later sided with the Spanish against the Inca.

Gil Ramírez Dávalos founded Santa Ana de los Ríos de Cuenca in 1557 on the old Inca site, and Loja had been founded a decade earlier, in 1548, as a base for gold mining and the push into the Amazon. Cuenca declared its independence on 3 November 1820, and the south joined Gran Colombia and then Ecuador.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the region grew on toquilla-straw hats, woven here for export through Panama and sold as "Panama hats", and on quinine bark from the Loja forests. When the hat trade declined, many emigrated, and since the economic crisis of the 1990s Azuay and Cañar have been areas of heavy emigration, above all to the United States, Spain and Italy. The Paute river hydroelectric complex, built from the 1970s, made Azuay central to the national power supply.

Cuencanos are known across Ecuador for their sing-song accent, for civic pride and for a conservative, Catholic tradition that shows in the city's dozens of churches. The Pase del Niño Viajero on 24 December is the city's great Christmas procession, with children dressed as shepherds and other biblical characters, floats and bands. Carnival is celebrated with water fights and mote pata.

Crafts are the region's pride. The weaving of toquilla-straw hats, recognised by UNESCO as intangible heritage, is still finished and blocked in Cuenca's workshops, while nearby towns each have a speciality: filigree silver and gold jewellery in Chordeleg, the ikat-dyed shawls called macanas in Gualaceo, and pottery and ironwork in Cuenca's own neighbourhoods.

Loja calls itself the musical capital of Ecuador and has a conservatory, a symphony orchestra and a strong tradition of serenades and pasillo songs. Its biggest festival is the pilgrimage of the Virgin of El Cisne, whose statue is carried on foot some 70 kilometres from her sanctuary to the city each August. The Saraguro, a Kichwa people of northern Loja, stand out for their black clothing, silver pins and beadwork, and keep their own festival calendar.

Cuenca, Ecuador's third city, has about 400,000 people in its urban area and a reputation for being clean, orderly and well run, with rivers lined by walking paths and a tram opened in 2020. It is home to several thousand foreign residents, mainly retirees from the United States and Europe, drawn by the climate and prices. Loja has around 200,000 people; Azogues, the capital of Cañar, and the market towns of Gualaceo, Paute and Saraguro are much smaller.

The economy mixes crafts and light industry in Cuenca — ceramics, furniture, tyres and appliances — with farming, remittances, tourism and hydropower. Brick-and-glass houses in rural Azuay and Cañar, built with money sent from New York, mark the long history of emigration, and many villages are home mostly to older people and children.

Life is quieter than in Quito or Guayaquil. Businesses close for lunch, markets such as Cuenca's 10 de Agosto fill in the mornings, and Sunday is for family. Current issues include mining projects in the páramo and cloud forests, contested by communities worried about water, the severe drought of 2024, which lowered the Mazar reservoir on the Paute and led to national power cuts of up to 14 hours a day, and the rise in crime reaching even these calmer cities.

Southern cooking centres on pork and maize. Cuenca's hornado and chancho al horno, roast pork carved at market stalls, come with mote, the large boiled hominy that is eaten here with almost every meal; mote pillo scrambles it with egg, onion and achiote, and mote pata is a hearty Carnival soup of hominy, pork and ground squash seeds. Cuy, roast guinea pig, is a festive dish in villages around Cuenca, often spit-roasted over charcoal, and morcilla blood sausage is a market favourite.

Loja has its own distinct kitchen. Repe, a creamy soup of green bananas and fresh cheese, is its best-known dish, along with tamales and humitas. Horchata lojana is the city's traditional drink, and Loja's coffee, grown in the southern valleys, is among Ecuador's most prized.

Cuenca's bakeries sell quesadillas, sweet cheese-filled pastries, and in November the pan de Todos Santos and colada morada of the Day of the Dead. Canelazo, a hot drink of cinnamon and naranjilla, often with sugarcane spirit, warms cold evenings throughout the region.

Cuenca's historic centre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is best seen on foot: the Parque Calderón with the Old Cathedral of El Sagrario and the blue-domed New Cathedral, the flower market beside the Carmen de la Asunción convent, the steep lanes of El Barranco above the Tomebamba river, and the Pumapungo museum, with the excavated remains of Inca Tomebamba in its grounds. The Turi viewpoint overlooks the city, and hat workshops open their doors to visitors. East of the city, Gualaceo and Chordeleg make an easy craft loop.

North of Cuenca, in Cañar province, the Ingapirca ruins stand on a grassy hill: the elliptical Temple of the Sun of fitted Inca stone, Cañari burial areas, storehouses and a stretch of the Inca road.

West of Cuenca, Cajas National Park protects a high, cold páramo of more than 200 glacial lakes, with trails around Laguna Toreadora and through dwarf polylepis forest, and the road to Guayaquil runs straight through it.

In the far south, Loja has a compact centre of plazas and churches and the city-gate building on its northern edge, and is a base for the western side of Podocarpus National Park and the sanctuary of El Cisne. An hour south, the Vilcabamba valley, beneath the ridge of Mandango, is known for its easy climate, walking and riding trails and small guesthouses, and the Saraguro villages lie on the road north of Loja.