Ecuador

🇪🇨 Ecuador

Guayaquil

Guayaquil is Ecuador's largest city and its commercial engine — a Pacific port of 3.1 million people that most travellers see only as a transit stop for the Galápagos Islands, thereby missing one of South America's most atmospheric waterfront cities. The Malecón 2000 (a 2.5km riverfront promenade along the Río Guayas, rebuilt from a derelict port into a world-class public space) connects the 1870s iron-house neighbourhood of Las Peñas to the modern financial district. Cerro Santa Ana, a 444-step painted hillside colonised by artists and café owners, gives the best view of the city and the river estuary. The Galápagos connection means Guayaquil airport has excellent international flights, and the city itself rewards one or two days of genuine exploration — the ceviche here (with a shrimp-and-tomato base fundamentally different from Peruvian ceviche) is among the best in Ecuador, and the Simón Bolívar park, filled with iguanas that ignore humans entirely, is one of South America's most enjoyable free experiences. Best months: June–November (dry season, less humidity).

🇪🇨 Ecuador

Quito

Quito is the capital of Ecuador and the second-highest capital city in the world at 2,850 metres above sea level (after La Paz/Sucre in Bolivia) — a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1978 (one of the first two in the world, jointly declared with Kraków, Poland) for its extraordinary colonial historic centre, the largest, best-preserved and least-altered colonial city centre in Latin America. The city sits in a mountain valley surrounded by volcanoes: Pichincha (4,784 m, an active stratovolcano whose 1999 eruption deposited ash on the city), Cotopaxi (5,897 m, 70 km south, one of the world's highest active volcanoes), and the Antisana (5,753 m, 50 km east); the altitude means Quito has a perpetual spring climate of 14-18°C year-round (the "city of eternal spring") with intense UV radiation due to proximity to the equator. The Old Town (Centro Histórico, 320 hectares, 130 buildings of architectural merit) has the most complete ensemble of colonial religious architecture in the Americas — the Compañía de Jesús church (1765, the most ornate Baroque church in the Americas, with an estimated 7 tonnes of gold leaf on its interior surfaces), the Plaza Grande (the central square with the Presidential Palace, the Metropolitan Cathedral and the Archbishop's Palace in pristine colonial form), and the 45 churches and convents of the historic centre. Quito was the northern capital of the Inca Empire (Tahuantinsuyo) before Spanish conquest (1534 by Sebastián de Benalcázar) — the Inca city was destroyed and built over by the Spanish, but the Museo del Banco Central has the finest pre-Columbian gold collection in Ecuador showing the Inca, Manteño and Valdivia cultures. The Middle of the World monument (Ciudad Mitad del Mundo) — the equator line 20 km north of the city — is one of the most visited tourist sites in South America.