Ecuador tourist guide

This tourist guide is ideal to plan your recreation or business trip throughout Ecuador. Due to its geographic conditions, Ecuador could be called the summary of South America. Besides, the short distances within the country make it easy to visit its cultural and landscape wealth.

This guide will provide you with updated 2006 road information in practical maps, including the main, secondary and third-order roads; the most important hotels, restaurants, and tourist sites; as well as the main regional gastronomy.

Among the suggested tourist spots are important ecological, landscape, historic, and cultural sites; museums, archaeological centers, beaches, and practical information for your trip. You will learn about the main traditional festivities in the different provinces of Ecuador with their highlights on historic and natural features.

This guide puts special emphasis on nature and shows the most important places where you can learn about it – the best areas for butterfly and bird watching and even whale watching! In relation to its size, Ecuador is the country with the highest concentration of birds and butterflies in the world. The same happens with orchids and other flora species.

The distances between the cities that appear in this guide could vary in a few kilometers in relation to other information sources because they may be measured from different points of the center or the outskirts of the different cities. Also, the altitude above sea level could vary as well; in the case of cities with a rough landscape, such as Quito, the Ecuadorian capital, the altitude is measured in round figures, e.g., 2 800 masl (9 184 ft. asl.).

In what concerns the traditional festivities in each region, this guide contains only the most important ones which deserve the trip to enjoy them! Ecuador also has diverse local festivities in each of its towns, provinces, and cities.

Ecuador a small continent

Geographic features

Because Ecuador is located at the Equator, is crossed by the Andes Cordillera, lies next to the Pacific Ocean, is part of the Amazon, and has the Galapagos Islands, it is one of the most biodiverse countries around the world. In a very small territory (approximately 270 000 sq. km or 105 000 sq. miles) you will find glaciers, as in the poles, active volcanoes, tropical jungles, deserts, temperate valleys, calm or rough seas, huge rivers, splendid waterfalls, and, last but not least, the Enchanted Islands, actual laboratories of biological evolution.

Such geographic variation in the tropics has given place to one of the world’s highest concentrations of flora and fauna. To set an example, Ecuador has world records in the amount of birds per territorial unit (over 1 630 species) and in the amount of butterflies (over 2 700 species of day-flying butterflies.) It probably reaches a similar record with orchids as well.

Farming products are as varied as the weather. We have successful plantations of banana (Ecuador is one of the world’s main banana exporters), high-quality cacao and coffee, rice, etc., as well as template- and cold-weather products such as wheat, potatoes, and other native tubers, such as sweet potatoes and mellocos.