Families spend lifetimes in the mossy hills of El Cajas National Park in Ecuador, and still find it mysterious. Perched high in the clouds of the Andes, its legends pour into the nearby city of Cuenca.
“Visitors often report strange lights in the sky,” says Jaime, my Ecuadorian brother.
“Keep your eyes open.”
He’s been family since he studied English with my parents in Canada. That was 10 years ago. Now, the roles have reversed.
He’s brought me to his spiritual second home: Rancho Prado. This homestead in El Cajas is made up of four adobe buildings in a unknowable expanse of folding hills.
He hands me a weak, savoury tea and I cup the heat. My fingers burn from the cool hike up through damp forest.
Even Ecuador, a country named for being on the equator, is chilly at a few thousand metres of elevation.
“It’s not the best flavour but it’s good tea for altitude sickness,” he says.
Inside Rancho Prado.
We sit in a round room beside a fireplace made of hand-placed stone.
I throw a poncho around my shoulders as Bon Jovi bellows from the stereo. English music feels as otherworldly here as the strange lights.
“Rocky wants you to feel at home,” Jaime explains.
A stout cowboy walks in and greets each of us in a half hug.
The ranch is inseparable from its owner, Rocky (Balboa’s other son, they joke). He’s wearing a black puffy coat, jeans, and a face that’s spent decades riding through rain.
He smiles more with his eyes, his mouth barely moves even when he speaks.
“I’ve seen the lights myself,” Rocky says.
“After a recent sighting, a thunderous BOOM knocked out power in Cuenca.”
No one can yet explain what happened or what is seen here.
Aliens? New technology testing? Free energy? There are more theories than facts.
These hills are essentially the Roswell of Ecuador.
Family ties.
Rocky has photographed many of the over 300 lakes that make up El Cajas. Yet, he’s always finding more while others vanish.
“My father engineered the highway here when I was a child. We’d stay nights at the ranch with the workmen. That’s how we met,” Jaime says.
Rocky nods and ducks out of the room.
“There was no electricity back then and just this one room. We all slept on the floor.”
I can’t imagine cutting a highway into the formidable Andes. I’d bussed through them at night. Memories of an endless stream of snaking chevrons flash in my mind.
“You’re lucky,” Jaime says. “It was dark so you only saw the signs and not the cliffs behind them.”
At one point, I’d woken up after being thrown against the window. The bus, without breaking, had swerved around a chunk of the road that had vanished. It looked like a bite had been taken out of the asphalt by a giant.
Or, perhaps it was the aliens.
The real invaders.
“I used to come up here for three days at a time with Rocky. We’d fish at my favourite lake, Mamamar,’” Jaime says.
It’s the largest lake in the park, so large its name means the “mother of the sea.”
The lakes are the main tourist attraction and source of income here. Trucha, trout, was introduced to El Cajas from Canada. They’re certainly the most deadly aliens in the park and have driven local species to extinction.
Rocky’s son arrives carrying their signature trucha platter. The fish is scored like a loaf of bread and wood fire roasted until the outside is delightfully crisped and crackling.
Maïs, a variety of starchy, savoury corn is served alongside coated in creamy cheese. Aji, a mix of onions, tomatoes, and hot peppers, sits in a shared bowl for those who like a little spice.
And, of course, there’s rice: a necessary part of Ecuadorian meals.
“Salud,” Jaime hands me a large shot glass filled with a warm, amber liquid.
“Cheers.”
We sip warming glasses of cañalaso with Rocky’s son. It’s a potent cane sugar alcohol, flavoured with orange and cinnamon.
“This place is a giant sponge,” Jaime explains.
It certainly feels like it.
El Cajas translates to “the boxes.” Some say it’s for the geometric rocks that stick out of the mossy hills. Jaime believes it’s for the amount of water it stores.
The hills stop clouds, absorb them, filter the water through vegetation, and then pour it into four rivers. Cuenca, Jaime’s nearby hometown, owes its prosperity to El Cajas.
The city is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site for its riches and architecture.
Cuenca’s full name is Santa Ana de los Cuatro Ríos de Cuenca, or Saint Anna of the Four Rivers of Cuenca, in homage.
El Cajas provides citizens with some of the purest water in all of South America, freshly filtered by the mountain tops.
Rocky still hasn’t returned. I wonder if he’s been absorbed into the hills.
Into the mists.
The rain takes a break and Jaime and I walk around outside to see what the mists will reveal.
Cloud forests huddle around the lakes and rivers. Their canopies create tunnels so green that they glow. Ducks with blue bills skirt the water framed by shimmering sandy grasses.
“These are a kind of beautiful parasite for the trees,” Jaime points out a type of orchid.
Mini terrariums coat any flat surface. Old Man’s Beard hangs delicately off the trees.
“My grandfather died in this park, so my family’s always felt part of it,” Jaime says.
“He was driving his herd through to Cuenca. He loved it here.”
Apparently a love of these cloudy hills runs in the family.
Just a few years ago, Jaime had woken up with a strange urge.
“I felt I needed to bring my father to see Rocky,” he tells me.
So, he did.
The three men had eaten fish in our very seats, talked about the lakes, and drank cañalaso while laughing at their highway building days.
“It felt timeless.”
Jaime’s father passed away suddenly a few weeks later.
“I think it called us here,” he says.
His grandfather had lived and died here, his father paved the way through, and Jaime can’t stay away from the lakes in El Cajas.
“I want my daughters to know this place. I’ll bring them here to fish once they’re older.”
El Cajas defines the Spanish word encantada, enchanting. It reveals its mysteries in pieces, taking generations to understand them or perhaps just to appreciate them.
“It’s said that you never visit El Cajas twice,” Jaime says.
As we return to the ranch, the clouds shift, the grasses glow in the sunlight, and everything looks different yet again.
I know exactly what he means.