Ecuador – Turismo Comunitario Salasaka

The Turismo Comunitario Salasaka project is settled in the valley of the Comunidad de Huasalata (Huasalata Community), Pueblo Kichwa Salasaka (Salasaka’s Indigenous Town), 2 hours and 30 minutes south from the Ecuadorian capital city and 45 minutes before you get to Baños de Agua Santa. The project was established in 2014 by 12 families and it was founded one year later. The project’s goal is to preserve Salasaka’s indigenous identity and take care of the environment: language, traditional clothing and crafts, ancestral food, architecture, historic celebrations, alternative medicine, holy sites, and sustainable agriculture. Since we started we have gotten support from or/and worked together with Huasalata Community Government, Pueblo Salasaka’s Junta Parroquial (government), Municipio del Cantón Pelileo (county’s government), Universidad San Francisco de Quito, PhD. Elizabeth Currie, tour operators, and other institutions and people. Incomes are paid to the families who were part of the operation and between 5% to 10% of incomes are destined to social activities, for example, rubbish container construction, fix access to the holy sites, new hut construction (ancestral architecture rescue), construction of a viewpoint, English teaching, gastronomy teaching, dental care brigade projects, participation in environment care conferences, participation on alternative medicine research, and other activities.