Palmira Desert – Chimborazo

The Palmira Desert is located in the Chimborazo Province, in the central highlands of Ecuador. It's not really a desert, as we might imagine the Atacama in Chile or the deserts of Peru, but rather an area of a few hectares heavily eroded by the wind, the dryness of the environment, and intensive grazing, which has allowed the formation of sandbanks with some small dunes. These semi-arid lands have belonged ancestrally to some indigenous communities in the area, who at some point decided to face the problem of “desertificación” by planting trees, especially pine trees, whose wood is currently exploited in a planned manner. With the arrival of tourists, the communities also found the opportunity to adapt this attraction for tourism and at the same time obtain an additional income. This experience is gratifying, that of walking between sand dunes and pine trees, watching how the wind shakes the tops of the trees, there simply letting yourself be carried away to where it occurs to you at that moment, with no particular objective other than to enjoy this different experience in the middle of nature.