PEGUCHE

This moment we are just 20 minutes away from the waterfall of Pegueche

Peguche has been considered as a sacred since ancient times, because people from Otavalo and
other nearby towns have come to this place to perform ceremonies and ritual baths.

For the indigenous worldview, everything in the nature is a living being and has its own gender,
waterfalls, mountains, rivers, plants, forests, everything.

In this case peguche is considered a woman, because usually appears in the dreams of men.

Every year hundreds of people visit the waterfall a day before the sun festival begins, in June 21. In
order take a ritual bath to have energy, courage to prepare themselves for the coming festivities.

That last for weeks.

A legend tells that inside the waterfall there is a cave, but not everyone can see it.

Inside this cave there is a big pot filled with gold coins, guarded by two black dogs, and to one side
one a rock is sitting the devil, holding in his and a dish with sand. If are willing to take the gold, the
dish is exchanged for the pot with gold as a loan, and the deal is this, every day the devil is going to
remove a grain of sand from the dish, if you don’t return the amount of money that you borrowed
until the dish is empty the devil will be the owner of your soul.

In fact, this place has a hidden story,

This place during the Spanish colony empire, was a farm ruled by Spaniards, most of the people
that worked in this farm were indigenous, and were treated as slaves, it was very common that
they died during working. And they were buried in this place. This means that Peguche actually is
a cemetery of native Indian people,