Two hours south of Cuenca, the guidebook runs out. The roads narrow, the villages grow quieter, and the mountains stop having names a visitor would recognise. That's where the good part begins.
I found the cave the way you find almost everything worth finding here: by asking the people who live beneath it. A neighbour pointed at the crag and said there was a mouth in the stone up there that the wind passed through. It took me two attempts to find the entrance.
The first time I moved through it and reached the window, I understood what Valhalla Trek was for before it existed. The limestone opens over the valley in a near-perfect oval. The light comes in on a diagonal. And all you want to do is stand on the edge and raise your pole.
There are no signs. No ticket booth. No railings. There's a Cañari trail, an honest climb, and at the end one of the most extraordinary views in southern Ecuador — that almost nobody has photographed. For now.
Hidden Caves expedition
The cave in this note is a real stop on a real route. 5–6 hours, max group of 8, guided by Juliana.
See the expedition · from $120