They call it the City of the Seven Hills, and for once the nickname earns itself. San Jacinto, Loma de Guaranda, San Bartolo, Cruzloma, Tililac, Talalac, el Mirador - seven peaks cradling a town that, at 2,650 meters, is the smallest provincial capital in the Ecuadorian highlands. But the first thing a visitor learns about Guaranda is not the topography. It is the name of a drink: Pajaro Azul. Blue Bird. A firewater made from aguardiente steeped with local herbs until it glows faintly in the light, and offered freely during the eight-day Carnaval that has made this otherwise modest Andean town famous across the country.
Guaranda's Carnaval is not organized by a committee or a tourist board. Each year, the festivities are personally funded and officially opened by a large local landowner warmly called Taita Carnaval - Father Carnival - who makes a grand entrance into town to signal that the party has begun. For eight days, parades, dancers, strolling poets, and masked revelers roam the streets. Groups of musicians drift house to house and collect alcohol along the way. Local chicha - a maize-based traditional drink - flows alongside the notorious Pajaro Azul, which is aguardiente mixed with local herbs. In the rest of Ecuador, Carnaval is celebrated by throwing water at strangers. In Ambato the water is banned. In Guaranda, the water flies alongside everything else. The result is one of the most beloved carnivals in the country.
In Parque El Libertador, the central park where residents gather between six and nine most evenings, stands a statue of Simon Bolivar - the Liberator whose name this whole province carries. Local residents will tell you that a bees' nest has lived under the statue's right armpit for many years. Whether anyone has tried to dislodge the bees, or whether the statue cleaners simply work around them, nobody seems quite sure. The park itself is surrounded by colonial houses and municipal buildings, with panoramic views from the municipal towers and a nice interior courtyard. Across from the park stands the Cathedral, a stone-faced building with a marble altar, wooden ceiling, and stained glass windows. The nearby Salon de la Ciudad hangs paintings by local artists, and an anthropology museum at 7 de Mayo and Olmedo streets displays pre-Inca artifacts.
Three kilometers from the town center, on a hill in the northwest, the five-meter statue of El Indio Guaranga looks out over the Chimborazo volcano. The monument honors the Indigenous leader whose name became the town's name, and sits beside a cultural center and history museum covering the ethnographic heritage of the region. The climb up is optional - a taxi costs about a dollar - but walking gives a better sense of the surrounding landscape. From the statue's base, on a clear day, Chimborazo shows its snow-crested peak to the northeast, the 6,263-meter volcano that is farther from the Earth's center than Everest is (thanks to the planet's equatorial bulge). Two kilometers up the road toward Salinas de Guaranda, El Troje offers a two-hour canyon walk ending at the eight-meter El Infiernillo waterfall.
The main market days are Friday and Saturday on Plaza 15 de Mayo, with Saturday being the bigger of the two. Locals wear traditional dress - the older women in full ponchos and hats - while stalls sell produce, woolens, and crafts from the surrounding farms. This is when Guaranda feels most itself, a colonial town carrying out the weekly business that has kept it going since the Spanish founded the settlement. Around Carnaval time, the Guaranda Fair adds another layer: parades of locals on mules and horseback through 15 de Mayo Plaza, dressed in gold ponchos, black hats, and ceremonial masks. The tradition goes back centuries, well before anyone thought of provincial capitals or tourism boards. The food to try - fritada (fried pork), bollos (mashed plantains), hornado (slow-roasted pork), empanadas - comes out of kitchens that have been doing this the same way for generations.
Guaranda sits at a transportation crossroads. Buses run to Riobamba in two hours, to Ambato in two hours, to Quito in four to five hours, to Guayaquil in four and a half, each trip for about $2.50. The roads thread through high paramo and into the valleys. Nearby villages worth a visit include San Jose de Chimbo, twenty kilometers away, famous for its handcrafted guitars and fireworks makers. Chimbo has a museum dedicated to the story of Christ's shroud. A few kilometers beyond, the pyramid-shaped Cerro Zumbi was considered an ancient place of worship to the gods Cuiche and Katekil. Catequilla Hill offers hot springs with reputed medicinal properties. And about an hour away, the cooperative village of Salinas de Guaranda runs on an unusual model: a self-sufficient community producing cheese, chocolate, wool goods, and sausages under the Salinerito brand, all of them visible on shop shelves in downtown Guaranda itself.
Guaranda sits at approximately 1.61 degrees south, 79.00 degrees west, in the central Ecuadorian highlands at an elevation of 2,650 meters. The city is the capital of Bolivar Province. Nearest major airport is Mariscal Sucre International (SEQM) in Quito, approximately 100 nautical miles to the north. Chimborazo volcano stands 6,263 meters high roughly 45 kilometers to the east-northeast, a spectacular navigation landmark when cloud cover permits. From altitude, look for the seven hills that give the town its nickname, the switchback roads descending to Babahoyo and the coast, and the Salinas plateau extending to the northwest. Best visibility is during the dry season, June through November.