South America

Salinas de Guaranda is a small village in the Province of Bolivar more or less in the center of the Andes and Ecuador. It used to be known for its salt mines and production of some of the best salt in Ecuador.

However, today the village is known for it co-ops that produce yarn, knitted goods, chocolate, and many types of cheese. I arrived in the evening and it was raining and cold. The change in altitude here and temperature really hits you. From the city of Guaranda I took a camioneta to Salinas. I asked to be dropped of at a cheap hostel. The driver brought me to one and waited until the owners came to open the door, we had to honk a few times to get their attention.

The rooms in the hostel looked like motel 8 rooms with about 4 layers of blankets because they were freezing and the hostel / most places don't have heat.

The next day I got up to explore the town. It was rainy, but still people were out and about. It was market day so many people from the countryside were coming in with milk to sell carrying it o their backs, on horse, donkeys or lamas.

I first went to check out the salt mines which looked like many of the volcanic areas I've see in Iceland. While walking down there I met an older lady named Isabel. She told me she was going to see the mines too so we walked together.

Isabel was from a small town called Santa Rosa de Ambato. She had seen Salinas on the TV and always wanted to visit, but taking care of her family or feeding her pets prevented her from doing that. Now in her older years she decided she would go visit, but this time alone all by herself, which her kids were a bit worried.

She talked and talked and clearly she had to have known I was foreign, but that didn't matter. As she and I were the only tourists in the village or so it seemed we decided to explore the co-ops / factories together.

We first went to where they sold many of the knitted goods. Many of the women who worked at this co-op would knit at home and then bring it to the store to sell or send it off to various markets in the country. Just up the road was where the yarn for the goods was made. A large factory building with some pretty archaic looking machines would take the wool, wash it, pull it, wind it and dye it.

Officially we weren't allowed in the factory and were supposed to wear hard hats that could be rented in the center of town. One of the men in the factory told us this, but Isabel always seemed to ask around until someone gave us the ok. When others would tell us the opposite shed just say that so and so said it was ok and smirk a bit.

From there we went on to find the chocolate and cheese factories, which in themselves weren't much to see, but the samples were worth it.

The whole morning was spent wondering around the factories and sneaking into the off limit areas with Isabel. As lunchtime approached Isabel caught a truck back to the city of Guaranda and I went to have lunch before heading off to my next destination.Read more