Andean Spirit

Where earth touches the sky

Living in the Ecuadorian Andes means growing up among volcanoes, mountains, and páramos. From an early age, we learn to look toward their peaks, imagine stories, and eventually decide to walk their trails, climb their mountains, and understand the ecosystems that sustain life at high elevations.

We explore páramos covered in highland grasses, lagoons, mountain forests, and landscapes where water is born and begins long journeys toward the Pacific Ocean and the Amazon Basin. We are inspired by Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Cayambe, El Altar, Pichincha, the Ilinizas, Tungurahua, Imbabura, Cotacachi, Rumiñahui, Pasochoa, and El Cajas, among many other Andean territories that rise above the landscape with a presence that is impossible to ignore.

Among volcanoes, páramos, and high-altitude forests, we discover a different way of understanding nature

The memory of peoples such as the Quitu, Caranqui, Puruhá, Cañari, and Cayambi also remains here, and their ways of understanding agriculture, natural cycles, and the land continue to be part of our history. Living on the equator also shapes our relationship with light: days of relatively constant length, intense sunlight, and brief sunsets that quickly transform the colors of mountains and valleys.

Along the western slopes, the Andes meet the Andean Chocó, one of the most diverse regions in the country. Mindo, Intag, and other foothill forests bring together humidity, rivers, lush vegetation, and an extraordinary diversity of birds and wildlife.

But the Andes are also cities, markets, roads, food, and people. Quito, Ibarra, Otavalo, Cotacachi, Riobamba, and Cuenca are part of a territory where nature and culture are constantly intertwined.

Andes is our interpretation of this world of volcanoes, páramos, forests, and cultures: a land of altitude, silence, light, and an energy that seems to rise directly from the earth.