Quito & the Northern Andes

Before the Inca, the northern highlands belonged to chiefdoms such as the Caranqui and Cayambe around today's Ibarra, the Panzaleo around Latacunga and the Puruhá around Riobamba. The Inca pushed north in the late fifteenth century and met long resistance from the Caranqui; tradition links the lake of Yahuarcocha, "lake of blood", near Ibarra with a massacre at the end of that war. Quito became the northern centre of the empire, and it was the scene of the struggle between Atahualpa and his half-brother Huáscar just before the Spanish arrived.

Sebastián de Benalcázar founded San Francisco de Quito in December 1534 on the ruins of the Inca town. As seat of the Audiencia of Quito, it grew into a city of convents and churches whose painters and sculptors, the Quito School, supplied religious art across the Andes. Textile workshops, or obrajes, worked by Indigenous labour made the valleys rich, while earthquakes repeatedly reshaped them: the 1797 quake destroyed old Riobamba, which was rebuilt on a new site.

A junta in Quito deposed the Spanish authorities on 10 August 1809, a date Ecuadorians celebrate as the first cry of independence, and Antonio José de Sucre's victory on the slopes of Pichincha in May 1822 ended Spanish rule. Ecuador's first constituent assembly met in Riobamba in 1830. The railway from Guayaquil reached Quito in 1908, climbing through the Devil's Nose switchbacks at Alausí. In the modern era the highlands have been the heartland of Indigenous politics: the 1990 uprising launched CONAIE as a national force, and Quito has been the stage for the protests that toppled presidents in 1997, 2000 and 2005 and for large national strikes in 2019 and 2022.

This is Ecuador's most Indigenous region outside the Amazon. Kichwa-speaking peoples — the Otavalo, Cayambe, Salasaca, Puruhá and many others — keep distinct dress that marks each community, from the Otavalo men's long braid, white trousers and dark poncho to the Salasacas' black ponchos near Ambato. Communal work in the minga still builds roads and irrigation channels, and the Otavalo have built a trading culture that has taken their weaving to markets worldwide.

The festival calendar is dense. Inti Raymi fills Otavalo and Cotacachi with dancing around the June solstice; Latacunga's Mama Negra parades a blackfaced figure through town in honour of the Virgin of La Merced; the Diablada de Píllaro sends hundreds of masked devils through the streets at New Year; and Ambato's Fiesta de las Flores y las Frutas comes at Carnival. Guaranda's Carnival is one of the country's liveliest. In the Chota valley of Imbabura and Carchi, Afro-Ecuadorian communities play bomba music and have produced many of the national football team's players.

Crafts are tied to particular towns: leather in Cotacachi, woodcarving in San Antonio de Ibarra, weaving around Otavalo, and naïve paintings on sheepskin from Tigua near Zumbahua. Quiteños take pride in their colonial city and its manners, and the capital's rivalry with Guayaquil is a staple of national banter.

Quito's metropolitan district has around 2.7 million people strung along a narrow valley, with the colonial centre in the south-centre, the business district and La Mariscal to the north, and sprawling working-class suburbs at both ends and in the valleys of Los Chillos and Tumbaco below. The other main towns are Ambato, a commercial centre of a few hundred thousand, Riobamba, Ibarra, Latacunga, Tulcán on the Colombian border and the smaller Otavalo and Guaranda.

Government employment anchors the capital, and the region grows much of Ecuador's food: potatoes, maize, dairy and beans, while the greenhouses around Cayambe, Tabacundo and Latacunga produce the roses that make Ecuador one of the world's big flower exporters. Ambato is a trading hub for textiles and leather, and Tulcán lives off cross-border commerce.

The day starts early, when light comes around six all year; the markets are busiest in the morning, lunch is the main meal, and evenings are cold enough for a jacket. Current issues include the cost of living, migration from rural villages to the cities and abroad, pressure on Quito's water and traffic, and rising crime, which has reached the capital though at lower levels than on the coast.

Highland cooking is built on potatoes, maize and pork. Hornado, whole roast pig served with mote hominy and llapingachos (fried potato-and-cheese patties), fills market stalls from Ibarra to Riobamba, while fritada is pork simmered and then fried in its own fat. Latacunga is known for chugchucaras, a heavy plate of fried pork, mote, plantain, popcorn and empanadas. Cuy, roast guinea pig, is festival food around Ambato and in Chimborazo, and locro de papa, a creamy potato soup with cheese and avocado, is eaten everywhere.

Quito has its own specialities: yahuarlocro, a potato soup with sheep's blood and offal, and at the Day of the Dead in November, colada morada, a spiced purple-corn and fruit drink, with guaguas de pan, bread shaped like swaddled babies. Ibarra is famous for helados de paila, sorbets churned by hand in bronze pans over ice. Cayambe sells bizcochos, crisp biscuits, with dulce de leche, and Baños is the home of melcocha, sugarcane taffy pulled on wooden pegs in shop doorways. To keep out the cold there is canelazo, hot cinnamon and naranjilla juice often laced with sugarcane spirit.

Quito's historic centre holds the gold-lined Jesuit church of La Compañía, the monastery of San Francisco on its broad plaza, the Plaza Grande with the cathedral and presidential palace, the Gothic Basílica del Voto Nacional and the winged Virgin on El Panecillo. The TelefériQo cable car climbs the flank of Pichincha for views over the city, and north of Quito the Mitad del Mundo monument marks the equator. The cloud forests around Mindo, north-west of the capital, draw birdwatchers for hummingbirds and tanagers.

North of Quito, Otavalo's market spills out from the Plaza de los Ponchos, busiest on Saturdays, and nearby lie the village of Peguche and its waterfall, the crater lake of Cuicocha below Cotacachi volcano, the lakes of San Pablo and Mojanda and the colonial town of Ibarra. Near the border, the El Ángel reserve protects páramo dotted with frailejones, and Tulcán's cemetery is famous for its sculpted topiary.

South of Quito begins the Avenue of the Volcanoes, the name given to the valley between two lines of peaks. Cotopaxi National Park circles its snow cone, with the Limpiopungo lagoon below and a refuge used by climbers. From Latacunga, the Quilotoa loop links Zumbahua, the Quilotoa crater and its lake, Chugchilán, Isinliví and Sigchos by footpath and back road. Baños sits beneath Tungurahua, with hot springs, the Ruta de las Cascadas down the Pastaza gorge to the Pailón del Diablo waterfall. The avenue ends at Riobamba, the base for Chimborazo, Ecuador's highest peak, and for Alausí, where the railway zigzags down the Devil's Nose, while Salinas de Guaranda in Bolívar is known for its cooperative cheese and chocolate workshops.