The lush vegetation of the Andean crescent has often been used as exemplary of the conditions of naturalness of tropical montane cloud forests. The impressive vegetal growth with the imposing architectural adaptations to withstand gravity, wind, and humidity, has provided a luxuriant flair to the majestic trees and other vegetation types, often shrouded by clouds, that portrait iconic images of pristine jungle, loaded with epiphytic gardens and harboring an abundance of birds, insects, mammals and other animals, that in the whole, are considered one of the most important biodiversity hotspots of the planet. We aim to improve our understanding of the Andean flanks, those extensive sloppy terrains showing ecological gradients located on both, the western watersheds toward the Pacific Ocean, and the eastern watersheds flowing to the lowland Orinoquia or Amazonia, and finally to the Atlantic Ocean. We delve in the notion of hyperdominant taxa often associated with ancestral use of resources, and the actual evidence of prior human occupancy of the mountainscape; we grapple with the notion of a cultural bulge present in the current forest cover and made evident for anthropogenic transformation, be terracing, monumental constructions, trade routes, artificial drinking ponds, canals or aqueducts, and other manifestation of cultural ecosystem services provided by the cloud forest belt, often ignored in conservation parlor.