The Andes and The Coast
A Journey Between Mountains, Sea, and the Living Heart of Ecuador
Two Worlds, One Soul
Every country has a pulse.
Some places greet you with noise, others with silence.
Ecuador welcomed me with contrast, two worlds standing side by side, each holding a different truth of the Earth.
The Coast met me first: warm, joyful, soft in spirit.
A land of sun-washed air, open faces, music drifting in the airport, people arriving with balloons and flowers. It felt human. Intimate. A place where life moves with generosity and ease.
Then came the Andes, rising like an ancient spine of the Earth, mountains older than memory, villages tucked into valleys, clouds brushing the rooftops of Quito. The altitude changed more than my breath; it changed my awareness. Everything felt both grounded and elevated, as if the land itself invited stillness.
These two worlds, the sea and the sky could not be more different. Yet together, they form a single experience, a single vibration: Ecuador’s soul.
And I arrived open, curious, with the intention not just to see this country, but to feel it.
To understand it not through itineraries, but through energy, presence, and connection.
To let each world reveal what it knows.
This is the story of that revelation, a journey between ocean and mountains, between warmth and altitude, between the human and the sacred.
A journey of two worlds.
One soul.
Arrival in Guayaquil
Guayaquil welcomed me the way a person does, not a city, with warmth, sweetness, and a sense of being received.
The airport was small and intimate, nothing like the anonymous spaces of large capitals. It felt almost like stepping into someone’s living room. Soft lighting, stone décor, families waiting with balloons, flowers, and handwritten signs. People smiling. People embracing. People feeling.
A live singer stood in the corner, filling the space with music, not to entertain, but to create atmosphere. It was such a tender detail, the kind you don’t expect in an international arrivals hall. I paused, listening, letting the sound become part of my first breath in Ecuador.
Javier, my tour guide, was waiting. His presence was warm, alert, grounded, the kind of person who immediately gives you the feeling that everything will be taken care of. I was among the first to clear customs, as I often am, traveling light with just a carry-on and a backpack. There is freedom in not having checked luggage.
While we were walking to his car, I watched the people around me. Something in the air was different here. Softer. Kinder. More human.
This was my first lesson from Ecuador’s Coast: before landscapes, before wildlife, before history, you meet the people.
And the people set the tone: warm, welcoming, and full of life.
The City of Sculptures and Stories
Guayaquil revealed itself slowly, like someone who doesn’t try to impress you and that is exactly what it does.
The first thing that caught my attention as we drove into the city were the sculptures. They were everywhere: tall, expressive, almost mythological shapes rising from roundabouts, plazas, parks, and riverfront walkways. They gave the city a kind of soulful architecture, as if the streets themselves were speaking through art.
Many of these works belong to Juan Sánchez, a local artist whose monumental sculptures have become part of Guayaquil’s identity. His pieces have presence, not decorative, not ornamental, but intentionally alive. They stand with weight and meaning, honoring the strength, resilience, and spirit of the Ecuadorian people.
Seeing his work scattered throughout the city made Guayaquil feel like an open-air museum, a place where art is not kept behind glass but woven into daily life. Even brief glimpses from the window carried the sensation that someone had infused creativity into the rhythm of the streets.
As we continued toward the Malecón, the long walkway hugging the Guayas River, the city opened like a storybook. Palm trees, families strolling, vendors selling small snacks, colors and movement everywhere. Guayaquil isn’t a city that demands attention. It simply exists, vibrant and authentic, and you find yourself drawn in without effort.
There is joy here. A naturalness. A sense of a city that breathes with its people.
In the sculptures, I felt its history.
In the river, its heartbeat.
And in the air, warm, soft, inviting, its spirit.
Guayaquil felt like a gentle introduction to Ecuador: artistic, human, grounded, alive.
The Coastline: Salt, Sun, and Simplicity
Outside Guayaquil, the landscape softened. The city slowly gave way to open skies and a coastline shaped by salt, sun, and simplicity, the kind of simplicity that feels like a breath you didn’t realize you needed.
The Pacific here is different from other oceans I’ve known. It feels calmer, more intimate, almost shy. The light has softness to it, reflecting off the water in wide, gentle strokes. Life moves at a slower rhythm, tuned to tides, to weather, to the quiet work of fishermen who head out before dawn and return with the sea’s offerings.
Along the coast, small villages appeared like beads on a string, humble, colorful, full of everyday life. Children running barefoot. Women selling fruit. Men tending to boats painted in shades of blue that seemed borrowed from the ocean itself.
There is something grounding about coastal communities like these. No pretense.
No rush. Just the presence of people living close to nature, shaped by it, intertwined with it.
Driving through these places made me feel something I hadn’t felt in a long time: ease.
An exhale. A reminder that life doesn’t have to be fast to be full.
The coast prepared me for what was coming next, the shift from sea level to sky level, from warmth to altitude, from softness to sacredness. It was a gentle opening of the heart before entering the profound world of the Andes.
And I felt grateful for this beginning. For the salt in the air, the sun on my skin, the colors of the villages, the humanity of the people, and the feeling of being welcomed by a land that isn’t trying to impress, it simply offers itself.
The Coast was my first door into Ecuador. A door made of simplicity, beauty, and the quiet truth that joy often lives in the smallest, most authentic moments.
The Cacao Farm: Where Chocolate Is Born
Before leaving the Coast, we stepped into a place where transformation happens quietly, patiently, and by design, a cacao farm nestled in the warmth of Ecuador’s lowlands.
Cacao does not announce itself as chocolate. It begins as a fruit, modest, almost unassuming, growing directly from the trunk of the tree, close to the earth. When opened, the pod reveals pale seeds surrounded by a sweet, sticky pulp. Nothing about it resembles the chocolate we think we know.
And that is the lesson.
Chocolate is not created by accident. It is earned through process.
We walked through the farm slowly, learning how cacao must be fermented first, carefully placed into wooden boxes, layered, covered, and turned over several days. Fermentation is what develops flavor. Too little, and the cacao is flat. Too much, and it becomes bitter. Precision matters. Timing matters. Attention matters.
Only after fermentation does drying begin. Then roasting. Then grinding. Then refinement. Each step builds on the previous one. Nothing can be skipped. Nothing can be rushed.
Standing there, surrounded by cacao trees and the warm, humid air of the Coast, I felt the metaphor immediately.
This is how transformation works in life, too.
What we enjoy at the end, sweetness, richness, depth, is the result of invisible stages most people never see. Stages that require patience, care, and respect for process.
The cacao farm carried the same energy as the Coast itself: grounded, generous, unpretentious. A reminder that some of the most exquisite things in life are born slowly, close to the earth, guided by wisdom rather than speed.
Ascent into the Andes
Leaving the Coast felt like turning a page.
The warmth, the softness, the salt in the air slowly faded behind me as the road and the altitude began to climb. The landscape transformed with each mile, as if Ecuador were guiding me upward into an older, wiser part of itself.
The Andes do not announce themselves.
They emerge, one ridge, then another, then another, until suddenly the mountains are everywhere, surrounding you like a vast, ancient cathedral built not by hand, but by time.
The higher we climbed, the more I felt the shift inside my body. The breath became slower, deeper, the air cooler, thinner. My awareness sharpened. The world below receded. The sky seemed closer, almost within reach.
There is a feeling the Andes give you the moment you arrive: a grounding that roots you,
and a height that expands you. It is paradox and harmony at once.
Quito appeared like a city suspended between earth and heaven, resting along the slopes of mountains that have seen civilizations rise and fall. The volcanic peaks, silent, watchful, majestic, stood in the distance like guardians. You sense immediately that this is a place of history, spirit, and memory.
Entering the Andes felt like stepping into a realm where the Earth speaks more clearly.
Where every stone has a story. Where every mountain carries an old soul.
And in that moment of arrival, with the sky stretching above me and the city unfolding below, I understood something quietly powerful: the Coast welcomes you, but the Andes receive you.
Quito: Where History Lives in the Streets
In Quito history is not something you visit; it is something you move through. The streets carry footsteps layered over centuries, and the buildings do not perform for attention, they simply stand, doing what they have always done: holding life.
In the Old Town, color and stone meet with quiet confidence. Churches rise with carved facades and heavy doors, not imposing, but steady witnesses rather than monuments. Markets spill into the streets with fruit, flowers, textiles, voices. Life unfolds on a human scale.
What struck me most was not the architecture, but the continuity. Families walking together. Elders seated on benches. Children weaving between adults. Generations sharing the same space, the same rhythms, the same streets.
In several churches, services were already in progress when I entered. I did not stay long, yet the atmosphere stayed with me. There was singing, not solemn in the way I was accustomed to, but warm and alive. A communal devotion. A shared breath. For a few minutes, I was not a traveler passing through; I was simply another human inside a collective moment.
It reminded me of something essential: throughout history, places of gathering were never only about faith. They were about belonging. About anchoring people to one another, to time, to meaning. Quito carries that anchoring quality everywhere. In its streets. In its churches. In the way life unfolds without urgency.
The Andes rise all around the city, quietly present, shaping not only the landscape but the pace of existence. At this altitude, things slow down naturally. Breath becomes conscious. Movement becomes deliberate. Awareness sharpens.
Quito felt like a bridge between past and present, between earth and sky. A city that does not rush forward, because it remembers where it comes from.
And walking through it, I felt something settle inside me: a calm respect for places that do not chase novelty, but instead honor continuity and through it, teach us how to stay rooted while time moves on.
Papallacta Hot Springs: Waters from the Volcanoes
After the density of the city, Papallacta felt like an exhale.
High in the Andes, where mist drifts slowly across the mountains and the air turns cool and clean, warm mineral waters rise from deep within the Earth. These waters are born of volcanoes, of pressure, heat, and time and they arrive at the surface not with force, but with gentleness.
Stepping into the pools, the contrast was immediate.
Cold air on the skin.
Warm water holding the body.
Silence stretching wide in every direction.
Here, the body can stop efforting. The land does the work.
The steam softened the edges of thought. Muscles released. Breath deepened. The body listened. I felt held not by hands, but by geology, by a living system that has been offering healing long before humans learned how to name it.
There is something profoundly humbling about resting in water that has traveled through volcanic rock, carrying minerals shaped by the inner fire of the planet. It reminds you that what heals us often comes from the same forces that once created upheaval.
Papallacta teaches through contrast.
Heat and cold.
Stillness and movement.
Surface calm and subterranean power.
Surrounded by mountains and clouds, with no distractions and no urgency, time loosened its grip. I stopped measuring moments. I simply existed within them.
This place did not feel like a spa. It felt like a sanctuary. A reminder that rest is not indulgence, it is restoration. That slowing down is not withdrawal, it is alignment.
That the Earth, when allowed, knows exactly how to bring us back into balance.
When I left the waters and stepped back into the cool mountain air, I felt lighter, not only in body, but in awareness. As if something unnecessary had been quietly released.
Papallacta does not impress. It restores.
Volcanoes: Power Beneath the Sky
In Ecuador, the mountains are not only mountains. They are volcanoes, living structures shaped by pressure, patience, and immense inner fire.
As we moved through the Andes, their presence was constant. Some stood fully revealed, others partially hidden by clouds, appearing and disappearing as if choosing when to be seen. There was nothing dramatic about them, and yet everything about them felt powerful.
Standing near Cotopaxi, one of the highest active volcanoes in the world, I felt a deep stillness settling in. Its symmetry is almost unreal, a perfect cone rising into the sky, calm and composed, carrying enormous force within. Volcanoes teach without words.
They remind you that what appears still may be alive.
That silence does not mean absence of power.
That creation and destruction are not opposites, but part of the same cycle.
The land here has been shaped by eruptions, ash, movement, and time. Valleys were carved. Soil was enriched. Life adapted. Beauty followed force.
There is a humility that comes from standing near such presence. Not fear but respect. The kind that quiets the mind and widens perspective. You realize how small human urgency is when placed beside geological time.
And yet, these volcanoes do not feel threatening.
They feel watchful.
Patient.
Grounded in their own rhythm.
The Andes seem to hold this wisdom everywhere: pressure is not something to avoid.
It is something to transform.
Without inner fire, nothing new is formed.
Without tension, nothing reshapes itself.
Without time, nothing matures.
Looking at these volcanic peaks beneath the vast Andean sky, I felt an unexpected sense of reassurance. A reminder that power does not need to announce itself. That strength can be quiet. That transformation often happens beneath the surface, long before it becomes visible. The volcanoes stand not as threats, but as teachers of patience, of restraint, of the profound intelligence of the Earth.
Hummingbirds: Lessons in Energy
After the stillness and power of the volcanoes, the hummingbirds arrived like a whisper, fast, bright, and impossible to hold with the eyes alone.
They moved through the air with astonishing speed, wings beating so quickly they became invisible. You don’t watch a hummingbird so much as sense it. A flicker of color. A sudden presence. Then gone.
Standing there, surrounded by them, I felt joy rise unexpectedly, light, immediate, unburdened.
Hummingbirds live entirely in motion. Their hearts beat at extraordinary rates. Their wings can move more than eighty times per second. Every moment is an act of energy management. They hover, dart, pause, return. Nothing wasted. Nothing excessive.
And yet, there is no tension in them.
This was the lesson: energy does not have to be heavy to be powerful. It does not have to be slow to be precise. It does not have to be forceful to be effective.
The hummingbirds carried a different kind of mastery, one rooted in efficiency, presence, and joy. Their brilliance is not accidental. It is the result of perfect alignment between need, movement, and purpose.
Watching them, I realized how often we misunderstand energy in our own lives. We associate strength with effort, seriousness with depth, slowness with wisdom. But here was another truth, alive and undeniable: lightness can be disciplined, joy can be focused, speed can be intentional.
The Andes, with their immense stillness, teach patience and endurance.
The hummingbirds teach responsiveness and flow.
Both are forms of intelligence.
As they hovered inches away, unafraid, fully absorbed in their work, I felt a subtle recalibration inside me, a reminder that how we use our energy matters more than how much of it we have.
The hummingbirds did not command attention. They earned it through coherence.
And long after they vanished into the trees, their lesson remained: life moves best when energy is aligned, not forced.
Roses of the Andes: Beauty Born from Altitude
High in the Andes, surrounded by vast skies and crisp mountain air, we visited a rose farm and encountered a different kind of mastery.
Ecuador produces some of the most beautiful roses in the world, and the reason lies not in excess, but in conditions.
High altitude.
Cool nights.
Intense equatorial light.
These elements slow growth, strengthen stems, deepen color, and create extraordinary symmetry. What appears delicate is, in truth, the result of resilience.
Walking through endless rows of roses, deep reds, soft blush tones, luminous whites, I felt a quiet reverence. This was not mass production. This was craftsmanship. Careful hands. Trained eyes. Daily devotion to beauty.
Each rose is cut at the precise moment when it is neither too closed nor too open. Timing again. Awareness again. Presence again.
There was something deeply moving about witnessing beauty cultivated with such respect.
The Andes do this to everything they touch.
They demand patience.
They reward attention.
They refine rather than rush.
In that space, surrounded by flowers shaped by altitude and light, I understood another truth:
Some beauty can only be created under pressure.
Some elegance is born from restraint.
Some strength expresses itself as grace.
The roses of the Andes do not shout. They stand tall, balanced, and complete, a living reflection of the land that grows them.
Closing Reflections: What the Andes and the Coast Placed in My Heart
As I prepared to leave Ecuador, I realized that what stayed with me most was not a single place, but a balance.
The Coast taught me softness.
The Andes taught me stillness.
The Coast welcomed me through people, through warmth, music, art, ease, and the quiet generosity of everyday life. It reminded me that joy does not need to be justified, that simplicity can be rich, and that human connection is often the first language of a land.
The Andes, by contrast, asked for listening.
They slowed my breath, sharpened my awareness, and placed me in the presence of forces far older than human timelines. Volcanoes, stone, altitude, water, and silence taught through restraint rather than display. Nothing rushed. Nothing begged to be understood.
Between these two worlds, I felt something settle inside me.
A reminder that life does not ask us to choose between depth and lightness, it asks us to hold both.
The cacao taught me that transformation requires patience and respect for process.
The roses showed me that beauty is shaped by conditions, not comfort.
The hot springs reminded me that restoration comes from allowing the Earth to do its work.
The volcanoes revealed that power can be quiet and contained.
The hummingbirds taught me that energy, when aligned, becomes joy.
And everywhere, in cities, villages, churches, farms, and markets, there were people. Living their lives. Carrying continuity forward. Offering welcome without spectacle.
Ecuador did not overwhelm me.
It aligned me.
It placed in my heart a renewed appreciation for rhythm, for knowing when to move quickly and when to pause, when to rise and when to rest, when to speak and when to listen.
Between sea level and sky level, between warmth and altitude, between motion and stillness, I was reminded of something essential:
We do not need to extract meaning from life.
We need to meet it where it is, as it is.
And sometimes, when we do, a place quietly places something back into us, a clarity,
a calm, a resonance that continues long after the journey ends. Ecuador touched something sacred in my soul. I did not only meet a country, I met a presence.
And it met me in return, through its Coast and its Andes, through the Amazon and the Galápagos, each revealing a different face of the same living spirit.
I left with a quiet certainty that this was not a goodbye. There is something here that calls you back. Not only because of the extraordinary diversity of its geography, but because of its people. Their warmth. Their dignity.
And I know I will return.
Live by Design, Not by Default.
Until the next horizon,
Coach • Traveler • Believer in Intentional Living
