Zaruma Ecuador

Zaruma sits in the south east corner of El Oro Provence in Ecuador at an elevation of 3773 feet. The city is known for its colonial architecture and the extensive use of wood building materials.

Zaruma was originally a gold mining town and today many small "puddlers" continue to wash gold ore for the local population.Zaruma was established in 1549 by the Spanish King Felipe II as a mean of controlling as efficiently as possible, the abundant gold found in the surrounding mountains.

Zaruma is home to approximately 24,000 inhabitants. Many direct descendants of the Spanish. Blond hair and blue eyes are not uncommon. The people are friendly and treat outsiders with a cautious and cordial approach.

Our first impression of Zaruma was that it was a place we could live. We are going to return with that in mind. Maybe we will get to spend a couple of weeks just looking around.

I'll post more as I learn more.

Zaruma used to be a gold mining town. In fact, it came into existence by a decree from the King of Spain as a means of efficiently exploiting the rich gold reserves in the region.

The town retains a great deal of its colonial charm and is to all appearances a prosperous town that doesn’t receive or need a lot of tourism. We will be visiting there to assess the viability of living there.

We have been to Zaruma once and found it to be clean, orderly, safe and comfortable. Now we will be looking at how easy it would be for non-Spanish speakers to live there. We will be examining such concepts as convenient shopping, potential social activities, and general comfort, and the ease and cost of living. The evenings are typically cool enough to make air conditioning unnecessary for even the most coddled of visitor.

Zaruma lies at 3773 feet which works well for us since we are used to living at 7,500 feet at our home in New Mexico.

Zaruma seems to be the kind of place that would lend itself to a quite and introspective lifestyle. It reminds me of what Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Taos, New Mexico and Santa Fe, New Mexico must have been like 60 years ago.

Above are photos of the Plaza de Independencia in Zaruma. We checked into our hotel (sorry, can't remember the name) just as an evening shower was drawing to a close. The plaza and streets were largely deserted. We decided to take a stroll around the area. What we found was enchanting! The streets were clean and in good repair and the few people we met greeted us cordially. We almost felt that we were walking through a fantasy of what a small Ecuadorian mountain town should be like.

While the streets were quite steep in places we found them to be easily navigated bu foot and (later) by car. Only an experienced cyclist would find them conducive to bicycle riding tho.

One of the numerous churches in Zaruma as seen from our hotel. We had a simple and tasty meal in a restaurant on the lower floor of our hotel that was quite good. For desert we tried some of their meringues. These were a light brown as the result of being made with the less highly refined sugar common in Ecuador. They were good and satisfied our craving for something sweet.

Could this be the stairway to haven. The door isn't bad either.

 Zamora clings to hill sides and rolls over the crests.  THere seem to be plenty of green spaces that mute the noise generated by cars and workshops.

Even the surrounding countryside is inviting.

To be fair Zaruma probably deserves a third look. We came into Zaruma about mid-day. We were looking for a hostal or hotel with parking since we were driving Teddy and hate to leave him alone on the street at night. We were unable to find a convenient place in town so we decided to look further outside of town for a room for the night. Ultimately we both felt a little uncomfortable with the town which seemed congested compared to our first visit. We also found the steep streets difficult and nerve-wracking to navigate. So after a few hours of getting lost and remaining lost we decided to high-tail it for Catamayo to spend the night.

Unfortunately we decided to take the road less traveled, a hazard of traveling with my husband. There is a 63 kilometer long road leading from Zaruma to a highway a mere five kilometers from Catamayo so we decided to give it a try. At first everything went well. Then the road turned from pavement to gravel after the first couple of kilometers. We are optimists, we expected it to return to pavement, which it did about sixty kilometers later. In the meantime we were on a gravel road that generated more dust then a cement factory and was periodically littered with rocks as big as your head and frequently was reduced to a single lane because the outside edge just happened to be falling into the valley far, far below. Our maximum speed was thirty kilometers per hour, which is about twenty miles an hour.

The light began to fade then went completely dark. We pulled over after dark to admire the lights of Zaruma and it was a beautiful sight. The lights of Zaruma lay far below us. It was a really romantic place to say farewell to the last drink we had taken in Zaruma.

Then the fun began. We were in the middle of nowhere with only one deteriorated sigh that we had read with hopeful confidence that it was correct and this was indeed the road to Catamayo. About two and a half hours later we had become lost and were just possibly on the road to nowhere. We were sure it wasn’t the road to hell because that is paved with good intentions and this road had never seen a good intent.

At this point I noticed that there was a truck overtaking us and My husband stopped the car and flagged down the pickup as it was about to pass. The good man stopped and told us that we were indeed; on the correct road and that he was, in fact, going to Catamayo. We speak no Spanish. He spoke no English so he finally just indicated that we should follow him, which we did, with a song in our hearts. We hit the hard highway about half an hour later and followed our benefactor to a nearby shrine where his passenger bailed out of the truck and made a fervent prayer of gratitude for having survived the passage. I remained in the car and said a few quick prayers to the manufacture of engine mounts which I was sure we were going to lose a time or two and to the Ecuadorian manufacture of our tires. I should not need to tell you that that particular shrine receives a lot of prayers of gratitude.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Healing-in-Ecuador to see the lovely town of Baños

http://hubpages.com/hub/Ecotour-Otavalo-and-Cotacachi for a look at Cotacachi.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Vilcabamba gives you a look at the Valley of Longevity

http://hubpages.com/hub/Bahia-de-Caraquez for a look at Bahia de Caráquez, a beautiful and peaceful (except for the parades) beach city.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Otavalo-Shopping-Therapy-for-the-Craft-Obsessed for a comprehensive view of Otavalo’s famous indigenous market

http://hubpages.com/hub/Zaruma for a look at this famous gold mining city. This one is a work in progress as we will be returning to Zaruma to explore the possibilities of using it as a permanent base.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Ecuador-Favorites to see many of my favorite photos taken in Ecuador with commentary.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Ecuador-Favorite-Photos for pictures of some of my favorite places in Ecuador with commentary.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Ecuador-Folklore to see some interesting talismans I have come across in Ecuador.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Bahia-de-Caraquez-the-Malecon to take a closer look at the Malecon during a holiday.

http://hubpages.com/hub/San-Clemente-to-Bahia to discover the beach that becomes a road at low tide.