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I lived in Ecuador for two years and despite all the chupacabra sightings, and strange animals found in the rainforests, the country is packed with legends of the supernatural. I particularly enjoyed collecting and listening to the legends and folklore of the people there, mostly those that came from the native americans who even today still thrive there.
In Ecuador there are many different tribes, the biggest perhaps being those of the Otavalenos who speak a language known as Quichua, very different from the language of Quechua which is more common to hear especially in Peru. However, in the rainforests of Ecuador, where the rivers and mountains give way to the beginning of the Amazon river, there are tribes of people that are unknown and man hasn't ever even seen in some cases.
My experience first occurred in a very small city not too far away from the coast, in a place called Cochancay near the bigger city of La Troncal. I was temporarily stationed in La Troncal for a few months and Cochancay was only an hour away. Now as for the geography of the area (because this is important), La Troncal was situated in the province of Canar bordering the provinces of Guayas, Azuay, and Chimborazo. La Troncal was more near the border of Guayas however, and lay just at the foot of the Andes Mountains. It was amazing to look eastward and see towering mountains above the city looking as if they would fall down upon the city at any moment.
Anyways, Cochancay was a little further westward than La Troncal and as such a slightly higher elevation. It wasn't as hot there and National Geographic once cited the place as one of the best climates in the world. Anyways, you go there and all year round, you feel the most perfect climate ever. Never too hot, and never too cold. Its place just at the foot of the Andes makes it a perfect climate.
So, me and a bunch of friends go to visit Cochancay at this place known as teh "Blue Lagoon," or Laguna Azul. We had a guide of course who was another friend of ours, a local native named Eduardo Benavides. He takes up this dirt road after we get off the bus and we start walking towards this little mountains and hills covered with thick trees and vegetation. Come to find out, Cochancay has its own rainforest and we're headed straight inside. On the way there, we picked lemons, oranges, and bananas from the trees along the path since they are found in abundance there. It was an awesome walk which turned into a hike up a hill and into the jungle itself.
We eventually came to a huuuuge and beautiful waterfall which at the top, we stopped to rest and cook up some hot dogs over a campfire of sorts. Eduardo tells us the legend of the place and calls this area "El Cerro Encantado," which translates to "The Enchanted Hill." He said it was a place that the native americans reverred as being holy ground where God himself had created Adam and Eve and created the Garden of Eden. To the indians of the land, this was a natural explanation especially when they learned that the land at one point had been all connected as a super continent. They would often say when countered, why couldn't the Garden of Eden be here? Afterall, it was before the flood and Noah after sailing the flooded earth for so long moved and could not have stayed in only once place, so why not.
Anyways, so the place was like a literal garden of Eden. Amazing animals and beautiful butterflies like you see in those nature shows. The animals weren't used to humans of course and as such, they weren't really afraid of us. Anyways, aside from the animals being friendly there, the legend states that the fruit of the trees in this place are the best fruit you ever taste and you can eat as much as you want of it, but if you try to take any with you to the outside world, you will be lost in the jungle until you dispose of it and give it back to the jungle.
Of course we don't believe it and take to eating the fruit there. Now I can tell you that there was a huuuuge difference in the taste of the fruit on the path to the hill as opposed to the fruit we picked there. You would not believe it, but even the lemons were so sweet and I have never ever tasted anything like that in my entire life. Sweet lemons and oranges, it was amazing.
So we hang around for a bit until it was time to go again. We start heading downwards and out of nowhere, I am struck with an idea that I think is simply the best in the world. Why don't we go down this little trail here down this side of the hill and through the forest to see if we can get some better pictures of this amazing waterfall, but looking at it more from the bottom. So everyone agreed to without even a second thought, which was the beginning of the weirdness.
We start climbing down, and down, and down realizing that there really was no trail, but our adventurous spirits tell us to keep going. WE get down about halfway and find the halfway point of the waterfall where the water has pooled up into a little pond area before going back over the edge again. We take some more pictures and realize we need to get back before it gets dark. So, we climb up. And up. And up some more. It took us less than 20 minutes to get down to that area of the hill and as I check my watch and everyone else does so, we find that we have been climbing upwards for about an hour now. We figure we're just going slower because we're going uphill. So we keep climbing and climbing and when we check the time again, another hour has past.
So now we're worried. We've all been climbing forever feeling like the path back downwards where we need to go is just right above us, but we never reach it. Finally, for no reason at all, I jokingly ask Eduardo if he kept any of the fruit with him, we hadn't afterall. It was a joke on my part of course because none of us believed the legend.
Eduardo's eyes suddenly got very big as he said "Ohhhh!!! Es cierto!"--which translated means "Oh, that's right!" I see him grab his backpack, reach inside and pull out two lemmons and two oranges and he chucks them into the forest. I pass him and climb ahead while he gets rid of the friut and no lie, the trail is right before us one minute later, literally.
Needless to say, we were all in absolute shock and amazement at what had happened. None of us believed even a bit of the legend until what we had gone through. Man was that weird. We got back home and thought about our experience as we kept asking each other if what happened was real or not.
So that's just one of my experiences. What do you think about it? What about legends and folklore in your area? Native American or otherwise, have you ever had any experience which really makes you question whether or not the legend was true?
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