Country file · South America
Cryptids of Ecuador
What cryptids are in Ecuador? The best-known are Yacumama and La Llorona.
Ecuador’s Amazon lowlands and Andean highlands share many legends with Peru and Colombia. The Yacumama, the giant “mother of water” serpent, is placed in the Ecuadorian Amazon in popular accounts, and La Llorona is told in Quito and across the highlands.
- 2 cryptids
Cryptids reported in Ecuador
Lake & sea monster · Pre-colonial
Yacumama
A vast Amazonian water serpent of Quechua tradition, ‘mother of water’, said to draw anything within a hundred paces into its jaws; a spirit of lagoons. Folklore
Spectral · 16th century
La Llorona
A weeping ghost in white who wanders rivers and canals at night crying for the children she lost – Mexico’s most famous and most widely told legend. FolkloreThe legends of Ecuador
These stories belong to living traditions of Quechua, Shuar and other peoples and to Spanish colonial folklore, and are best heard from local storytellers, museums and community tourism projects.
Hotspots
- Ecuadorian Amazon
River and lagoon country where Yacumama stories are told.
