Ecuador

Ecuador may be one of the smallest country in South America, but it is packed with amazing geographical diversity.  For a country named after the equator, you can find glaciers and climb through a cloud forest to a snow-capped mountain top on the same day as you canoe down a river in the Amazon jungle or snorkel with sea lions.  It’s rich with cultural history with its pre-Inca, Inca and Spanish colonial past reflected in its architecture archaeological ruins, food and people.  It is perhaps most well-known for its group of volcanic islands, the Galapagos, with its plants and animals, so unique that it became the basis for Charles Darwin’s revolutionary theory of evolution. Ecuador is located in the west side of South America between Peru in the, Colombia in the north, and the Pacific Ocean in the east.  Its great geographic and cultural diversity means that in one trip to Ecuador, you can climb a glacier-peaked mountain, sail around some idyllic tropical island, dance salsa or relax on an idyllic tropical beach, ride on horseback around a colonial hacienda, visit an ancient pre-Inca ruin, trek in the Amazon rainforest or paddle down one of its tributaries.