With rugged Scottish Highland resembling landscape and mystical forests, entering the trails of Las Cajas National Park is like penetrating another world. It has lush beds of moss and succulents, rolling green peaks, countless reflective lakes, and knobby gnarled trees that fell out of a storybook. And, at only 45-minutes from Cuenca, it’s easily accessible by any bus from the main station for about $3/ticket. There is no cost to enter the park itself. Everywhere you looked in Las Cajas there was magic beneath your feet…like scenes begging for a family of gnomes to come set up shop.
The variety of trails is fantastic. The one we chose, which was about 6k, was a bit undulating but not too difficult.
The clouds (no rain!) created an eerie, yet inviting ambience.
But our favorite part was the forest, which was peppered with craggy crooked paper trees called polylepis. These are some of the few polylepis trees left in the country and we’ve never seen such an otherworldly forest.
It was also cloaked with crepe-like mushrooms.
The bus dropped us off at the Toreodora visitor center along with about 8 other hikers.
The view from the visitor’s center.
We were so happy to be on the trail again! The trail, as expected, was a bit muddy but we only got a few sprinkles of rain. With the dry season coming in June, we are in shoulder season so weather has been a little bit of everything. But all in all, a terrific time to visit and definitely lacked the crowds.
One of the many lakes interspersed throughout. It was around here we saw a rabbit, but other than that, disappointingly very little wildlife although we read that wild horses and llamas were prevalent, as well as parrots, Andean toucans, pumas and deer.
These little yellow and pink blooms called Andean tulips were everywhere. They will undoubtedly be gorgeous when they explode with color. There was also spiny pineapple looking plants that only flower every 80 years!
Heading into the twisted forest…photos really can’t describe how mystical it was.
It was like scuba diving on a coral reef. Everything was bursting with life around you with copious discoveries to uncover.
Right out of a movie!
And if you’re hungry, there’s other mushrooms that look like potato chips!
Simply enchanting.
A close up of one of the gnarled tree trunks and a blanket of what resembles giant dandelion stems.
More crepe mushrooms. This name was coined by us. Not the scientific name. Shocking. 🤣
You’d think it would be bursting with sounds from insects or birds but it was surprisingly silent.
We found a cave!
More remarkable landscapes and purple wildflowers
We had our lunch on this bridge during a little peek of sunshine.
Greg was in a rare picture-taking mood that day. Where’d he go?
No really. Where is he?
Blankets of succulents beneath our feet often felt like walking on pillows.
We tried to take the red trail on our Mapy app back to the road to complete the loop. We were able to do this, but not without major obstacles because as it turns out, the end of the red trail is now private land and we ended up at an impenetrable gate just shy of the main road. Like, very visible and frustratingly only a couple hundred meters. Unfortunately, the trail at this point wasn’t very well marked so we had to find our own creative way out. Always an adventure!
