Sleep in an Incan Temple

Hacienda San Agustín de Callo, nestled in Ecuador's "Avenue of the Volcanoes" (and featured in a story of the same name by Charles Kulander in our April 2009 issue), calls itself an "archaeological estancia" and there's good reason for that. The hacienda's formal dining room and chapel were built in the 15th-century possibly by one of the last Incan emperors, Huayna-Cápac, out of intricately carved volcanic stone. Eighteenth-century Spanish colonial additions and 19th-century republican styles were piled over top of the Incan imperial architecture. Layer upon layer of Ecuadorian pre-Columbian, colonial, and contemporary history co-mingle and captivate at site.

Archaeologist Dr. David Brown of the University of Texas at Austin has been excavating at Callo for close to 15 years, with the help, we're proud to add, of two National Geographic Society grants. Brown told me that the quality of the stonework at Callo, the finely fitted wall blocks and the hulking double-jamb doors, suggest that it was no ordinary site during Inca times and was quite probably a temple or shrine dedicated to the even now still-active Cotopaxi volcano that rises above it to the site's east. In addition to the two extant rooms that are now part of the hacienda, Brown has unearthed the foundations and low walls of six other buildings that might have once formed a symmetrical compound.

Since Inca times, San Agustín de Callo has also played host to an Augustinian monastery, been a temporary home of the French Geodesic mission of the 1740s that worked to better understand the shape of our planet, and acted as a stopping place of German scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. The hacienda was purchased by current manager Mignon Plaza's grandfather, Leónidas Plaza Gutierrez, who served two terms as Ecuador's president, in 1921.

To get an inside scoop on San Agustín de Callo, especially its food, I got in touch with owner Mignon Plaza.

Because two rooms of the hacienda were built by the Incas, are there any restrictions about opening them up to the public?

The house and property are registered in the National Institute of Patrimony and Culture, where we solicit permission for archaeological excavations. No impediment has been established restricting the use of the Inca rooms.

What's the cuisine like at the hacienda? Your site calls it "authentic Andean." What does that mean?

We offer a combination of typical Andean dishes so guests get to savor the excellent Ecuadorian food. Most are sourced from the Andes region, though we also offer some items from the coastal region, such as plantain soup called sopa de bolón de verde, and some variations of ceviche. We try to make the dishes healthier and lighter to digest, give the altitude (9,842 feet).

Some of our guests' favorite dishes are the locro potato soup and llapingachos (a potato and cheese patty with onion fried in a heavy bronze pan). Quinoa is an Andean cereal that the Incas used as a staple. It is delicious and has high protein content. We make a fine quinoa soup, quinoa salad (with olive oil, tomato, and parsley), quinoa croquets, and use lightly fried quinoa to top certain salads.

Our breakfasts consist of homemade butter, yogurt, granola, an amazing assortment of egg dishes, cereals, pancakes, French toast, and fresh exotic juices. I tell our guests it's best to be well-fed at breakfast just in case you get lost up in the mountains!

Is most of the food served at your hacienda sourced/grown locally?

There are many local markets where we buy freshly harvested goods of great diversity. A market takes place almost every day. We do grow lots of our own products and we are always planting potatoes, broad beans, corn, grains, and peas.

Check in: There's plenty to do if you stay at one of the hacienda's 11 rooms: go horseback riding, mountain biking, or visit a nearby rose plantation or indigenous market. To see more photos from our April feature on Ecuador's haciendas, check out the photo gallery here on our site.

Photos: Pablo Corral Vega

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