If you enjoy culture, scenery and history, mixed with wildlife and opportunities to stretch your legs, then Ecuador’s compact size makes an ideal holiday. You can see a huge amount in a week or so, but Ecuador has more than enough to keep you enthralled for three weeks and more if you have the time.
Visitors on their way to the Galapagos Islands, which are owned by Ecuador, stop over on the mainland and wonder whether they should have stayed longer. The answer is resoundingly ‘yes’ – Ecuador has a huge amount to discover and explore.
One of the big surprises is the standard of accommodation, from smart hotels in Quito (Ecuador’s capital) to historic haciendas in the Andes offering high-end country lodgings, and well-managed wildlife lodges deep in the Amazon jungle. There’s good food too, from smart city restaurants offering everything from pizzas to haute cuisine in Ecuadorian flavors, to hearty meals of traditional farmhouse cooking. It’s true that spit-roasted guinea pig is a local delicacy on the streets, but if you’d rather leave them running around you’ve got plenty of other choices!
Number 1: Quito
Quito is the most fascinating city in the whole of the Andes. Its location is fabulous, it is steeped in history and culture, and it is a lively and attractive modern city too.
More or less slap bang on the equator, Quito sits in a cleft between two lines of volcanic peaks that form a dramatic backdrop and sculpt the city’s layout. At its heart is the historic city of Old Quito, founded a thousand years ago, annexed by the Incas, and overbuilt by Spanish colonialists. Its evocative narrow streets and wide squares are lined with palaces, mansions, convents and churches laden with gold. Fittingly, Quito’s Old City was the very first to be declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Spend at least two days in Quito, longer if you can, to explore the city, visit some of its art galleries, museums and archaeological collections, and soak up the atmosphere. There are also side trips to the equator monument which straddles the line, to the bird-rich cloud forests of Mindo, to the volcanoes (including a cable car to the top of Pichincha – the one closest to the city), and to newly-discovered temples of Quito’s ancient peoples. You’ll eat well, and there is a good selection of places to stay, including some very characterful boutique-style hotels in converted mansions in the Old City.
Number 2: The Amazon
East of Quito, the Andes plunge from snow-covered peaks to the dense jungle of the Amazon basin in just 30 miles. Having lost 10,000 feet in the blink of an eye, it will be another 2,000 miles before the land descends the final 1,000 feet to the sea.
Nutrients freshly washed from the mountains mean the rain forest here is among the lushest in the whole of the Amazon and hence very rich in wildlife. You’ll see far more here than further down the river where it becomes mightier and mightier.
To include a trip to the Amazon in your Ecuador holiday just catch a short flight from Quito, take a fast boat along the Napo river and you have a choice of three excellent wildlife lodges: Napo Wildlife Centre, Sacha Lodge and La Selva – each offering a slightly different take on the wildlife experience of this remarkable area. There’s an interesting river-boat cruise too.
Author Resource:-
Brendan writes about a range of travel and holiday destinations around the world with a particular focus on Ecuador holidays.
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