Veiled in mist, the rugged volcanic foothills and Andean páramo of Antisana Ecological Reserve drifted in and out of view. Somewhere in the near distance, the snow-capped volcano of Antisana soared majestically 18,800 feet into the sky. But, the surrounding scenery blocked by clouds and fog, our group of hikers could only picture it in our minds.
Earlier that morning, our tour guide Tomás Palma had described the remarkable diversity of Ecuador’s landscapes as “like going through 18 different countries: you’ll think ‘this looks like Costa Rica, this looks like Vancouver …’” he said. “We have a little of everything.” Well, I thought to myself, looking at the lingering mist and raw reserve’s steep mountains and glacier-carved valley, this looks like home: cold, wet Scotland.
It was difficult to reconcile this moody place with the destination Santiago Granda, co-founder of our host pre-adventure tour company, Amazing Ecuador, had enthused about earlier as we began our 3.5-mile hike up to the viewless viewpoint. “It has a special place in my heart,” he’d said. But, to be fair, he’d added presciently, “unfortunately, mountains, they are a little jealous. You can sometimes see them, sometimes you don’t.”
Our group was quiet on the way back down, the getting-to-know-each-other chatter of our first day together giving way to grim determination to stay upright in the slip-sliding terrain and get out of the damp cold and into the shelter where lunch awaited. In the quiet, I thought about what Tomás had earlier told us about the importance of Ecuador’s páramo. This high-altitude windswept ecosystem of grasslands and wetlands acts like a natural sponge, he’d explained, capturing rainfall and mist, filtering it through damp soil, then slowly releasing water into the rivers and reservoirs that sustain humans, animals and crops. Its volcanic soils store carbon and its vegetation stabilizes regional temperatures while sheltering unique species—an estimated 60 percent of its flora is endemic.
The volcano blocked from view, I focused my attention instead down at my feet. Golden tussock grasses bent in the wind while cushion plants and stunted shrubs clung to the boggy ground. No, these little plants weren’t as impressive as I’d imagined the picture-perfect snow-capped volcano I’d come to see, but they invited a little perspective: everything has its place.
If you’re looking for perspective, there’s probably no place better than the Highlands of Ecuador. It was on the steep slopes of Chimborazo, the Ecuadorian Andes’ highest point, that German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt had the revelation of seeing nature from what he called “a higher point of view.” There he began to understand nature as something like a fabric where each element—plants, animals, climate, geography, humans—is bound together like woven threads.
In “The Invention of Nature,” Andrea Wulf writes about Humboldt’s Ecuadorian journey and how it formed his vision of nature as an interconnected system:
“‘Nature is a living whole,' he later said, not a 'dead aggregate'. One single life had been poured over stones, plants, animals and humankind. It was this 'universal profusion with which life is everywhere distributed' that most impressed Humboldt ... Individual phenomena were only important 'in their relation to the whole.’”
A radical visionary of his time, Humboldt has been largely forgotten today. His theory of nature as a holistic and harmonious interconnected whole replaced by regressive modern thought that prizes individuality, treats nature as a resource to exploit and humans as self-interested competitors. But because the name of my Pre-Adventure with Amazing Ecuador had been coined by Humboldt, and the title of the Adventure Travel Trade Association's (ATTA) event AdventureNEXT Cuenca, Weaving Adventures: Culture, Conservation, and Connections in the Heart of the Andes, seemingly reflected his ethos, I decided that I would try to travel through Ecuador like Humboldt. Not by scaling mountains with an extensive kit of scientific instruments, but by being aware of the threads that connect everything and noticing how they interact.
Around 100 million years ago, the Nazca and South America tectonic plates converged. Out of this collision rose the Andes, the spine of South America, and two Ecuadorian mountain chains, the Cordilleras, among whose highest peaks are dozens of volcanoes, several of which are still active. When, in 1802, Humboldt explored the valley between the two ranges, lined, like a grand avenue, with one volcano after another, he gave it its name, “The Avenue of Volcanoes.” In turn, it gave him his theory of nature: as a unified, interconnected system in which all elements are deeply linked.
This was the route our AdventureNEXT Cuenca Pre-Adventure followed through the Andes, making our way from Quito south to Cuenca over four days. After departing Antisana Ecological Reserve, we settled in and warmed up at Hacienda La Alegría, a working farm where the owner Gabriel Espinosa, a skilled horseman, regaled us with tales of his multi-week horseback expeditions across the country.
The following day we all posed in borrowed llama-skin chaps for photos then discarded them in favor of comfort as we saddled up and rode into the surrounding rolling Andean landscapes. The weather rewarded us for our perseverance on that first day and blessed us for the rest of the trip. As we arrived in Cotopaxi National Park, the clouds cleared and the active volcano’s perfect snow-capped cone stood clear against the blue sky.
On the third day, the impossibly-turquoise waters of Quilotoa Crater Lake shimmered as we paddled our kayaks across the water-filled crater of an extinct volcano. Those of us who chose to tackle the punishing climb back up to the crater rim were later rewarded with a communal feast, pamba mesa in Kichwa, of potatoes, corn and cuy (guinea pig) laid out by the family of Julio Toaquiza Tigasi, recognized as the first person to paint in the naif Tigua style on sheepskin canvases—named for the Kichwa community of Tigua, located high in the mountains, Tigua artists’ vivid, colorful paintings depict Andean life and legends and even dreams.
Our final day was centered around a visit to the Palacio Real Indigenous Community Project in Chimborazo where our host Carmén introduced us to her llama, Blanquita, and led us around her community’s carefully illustrated and beautifully presented Museum of the Llama, where we learned that, unlike the sheep introduced by the Spanish, llamas are gentle grazers, helping vegetation regrow by nibbling plants without uprooting them and avoiding soil erosion by treading softly with their light padded feet. She explained how the whole animal is woven into daily life: its wool is spun into textiles, the meat is eaten, hides become leather goods and bones shaped into tools.
A traveler may see the Avenue of the Volcanoes as a setting for epic adventures. But that’s just one thread in the fabric of their whole. A more holistic picture of these landscapes would include their human guardians who protect them; the soft-hooved llamas, almost every part of which is used, and the artists who interpret their beauty and transmit it far and wide.
Walking in Humboldt’s footsteps, I wondered how his vision of interconnected nature could foster a type of tourism that values landscapes and cultures as a unified whole. My thoughts wove themselves together as AdventureNEXT kicked off and Trinidad Zaldivar took to the stage for her opening plenary, Culture - Living Roots: Culture and Communities at the Heart of Adventure.
“When Humboldt set out for South America, [the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe] told him: “‘never forget the arts,’” she told us while setting out her case for integrating the creative and tourism industries. “He later said that Goethe had given him new organs through which to understand the world,” she said. “His relationship with brilliant, poetic thinkers like Goethe didn’t just enrich his worldview, they deeply influenced how he chose to explore the world.”
Humboldt’s approach to exploration, deeply influenced by the arts, is expressed in his Naturgemälde (literally “painting of nature”), the first attempt to visually represent nature as an interconnected system, rather than simply a catalog of specimens or geographic features. It depicted Chimborazo with detailed layers showing altitude, temperature, vegetation zones and species distribution—all woven together into a single image. Humboldt didn’t just observe and measure the world, he felt it.
“That deep, systemic understanding of place is precisely what we need today in how we approach tourism,” said Trinidad. “Because tourism is not just about movement, it’s about meaning.” For Trinidad, invoking Humboldt’s legacy “has everything to do with how we travel, why we travel, and how we can build a tourism model that’s not just sustainable but also inclusive, creative and deeply human.”
By the end of the first day, after Intrepid Travel’s Fernando Rodriguez had spoken about how textile weaving is intertwined with the development of community-based tourism in the Peruvian Andes, everything had fallen into place for me. Previously, the first A in ATTA had me feeling a little like an interloper. I’m not exactly a thrill-seeking traveler, typically preferring to stroll around a museum than scale a mountain. I wasn’t too keen on the first T in ATTA either, thinking that my writing beat is more culture than travel. As a result, I’d had the sense of having snuck into the two previous adventure travel conferences—a feeling confirmed when I was left in the dust on both a bike ride in Maine and hike in Fiji. It turned out that I wasn’t alone: during our Marketplace meeting, Luis Velásguez from BilDev tours told me that he’d hesitated to sign up for the event because he doesn’t do adventure travel; he’s “focused on culture and community.” I think that AdventureNEXT dissolved those self-imposed hard borders between adventure and culture for us both.
In a time marked by deepening divides, AdventureNEXT Cuenca reminded me of the threads that bind us and, like the mist that conceals Andean volcanoes, that adventure travel is not just what we can see clearly in front of us. By embracing Humboldt’s vision, I saw a fuller picture: the páramo quietly holding water; the soil locking in carbon; the people whose lives shape the highland landscape, and are shaped by it in turn, and adventure travel expanded beyond scenery and summits and embracing culture, community and connections.
As Trinidad put it in her plenary: “Tourists are no longer satisfied with the generic itineraries or just checking off selfie spots. They want connection. They want to understand what makes a place truly unique. Not just its landscapes, but also its heartbeat.”
Learn more about Karen Gardiner at karengardiner.com.