Saraguro Ecuador is an hour from Cuenca in the Loja Province. It is home to the Saraguro Indigenous People, the famous Quesos Saraguros cheese and incredible views and waterfalls.

I stopped here to eat at ShamuiCo restaurant in Saraguro but it was closed! However, by chance we arrived on the important Saraguro and Inca festival day of Kulla Raymi with a Pampa Mesa. Kulla Raymi celebrates the planting of the seeds, for the agricultural season to come.

When you talk about Indigenous Peoples in Ecuador, it's not one homogenous culture. There are many different types of peoples here. Saraguro, and they wear all black. And then they have a hat that underneath actually looks like cow markings, it's white and black.

They wear all black because they are in mourning. And they've been in mourning for a long time. Because basically what happened during the Inca Empire was the Inca came through and said, okay, like you can either join us or you can fight us. And so a lot of different groups in Ecuador did join them. But they kept a lot of their own traditions, but somehow traditions involved also with the Inca tradition.

Saraguro Ecuadorian is a region known for its cheese. In fact, this spot now has cheese stores all over the country. However, it's a really interesting story because it is a cooperative. So at one point, the dairy farmers were selling milk just for commodity price and not doing very well.

So they realized they needed to ban together, learn how to make good cheese, work together to pay for the equipment. And now they're making some of the best cheese in the country. They will let you try a bunch of different cheeses. So the cheese here is called Queso Andino and they also have mozzarella, cheddar, smoked and aged cheese.

I missed ShamuiCo is run by Ecuadorian chef Samuel Ortega, who works in Girona Spain at El Bulli and El Celler Can Roca. And so I was really excited for this because he was taking all that knowledge but using hybrid local ingredients here. Supposed to be doing maybe cool things and it's closed.

I love almuerzo in Latin America because it's the biggest meal of the day. And it's a set menu, so you get a soup, a main platter, and then you also get a drink.

The other thing we tried was Kapak, which is from Saraguro.

After lunch we went to Virgen de la Agua Santa where you can go ziplining, climb to a waterfall or check out a canyon waterfall behind the church.

We went back to Quesos Saraguro for pizza. And we got four cheese pizza. Along with mortiño wine, which is an Andean blackberry that is used to make colada morada, which is very popular during the day of the dead ceremonies here.

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