The 10 Best Travel Experiences in Ecuador

Six hundred miles off the Ecuadorian coast, the Galápagos archipelago is a living laboratory of evolution where wildlife shows no fear of humans.

Charles Darwin's observations here inspired his theory of natural selection, and today visitors can snorkel with sea lions and walk alongside giant tortoises.

A small-ship cruise through the Galapagos archipelago, landing daily by dinghy on islands where sea lions, marine iguanas, and blue-footed boobies show no fear of visitors.

Charles Darwin's living laboratory looks much as it did when he arrived, thanks to strict limits on visitor numbers and permitted routes.

Snorkeling brings penguins and hammerhead sharks within arm's reach.

Each island differs sharply from the last in wildlife and landscape.

One of the world's highest active volcanoes, a near-symmetrical glacier-capped cone rising over 5,800 metres above the Andean paramo grasslands south of Quito.

Most visitors don't summit - that requires technical mountaineering and acclimatisation - but a hike or horseback ride to the refuge at around 4,800 metres gets close enough to stand at the glacier's edge, with wild llamas often grazing the surrounding slopes.

Its perfect-cone silhouette is one of the most recognisable mountain shapes in South America.

Deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Yasuní is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, home to more tree species in a single hectare than in all of North America, alongside jaguars, giant otters, harpy eagles and several uncontacted indigenous groups.

Jungle lodges reached by dugout canoe offer guided hikes, canopy towers and night paddles where caiman eyes reflect torchlight across blackwater lagoons.

Quito's historic center was the first UNESCO World Heritage Site ever designated, and remains the largest, best-preserved colonial-era old town in Latin America.

Baroque churches like La Compañía de Jesús drip with gold leaf inside plain stone exteriors, while plazas and narrow streets climb the Andean foothills at over 2,800 meters of altitude.

The Basílica del Voto Nacional's towers offer views across the whole old town.

A collapsed volcanic caldera holds this startlingly turquoise-green crater lake, its color shifting with the light and mineral content of the water below.

A rim trail circles the crater edge with views down to the lake and out across the Andean highlands, while a steep path descends to the shoreline for those who want to kayak or simply stand at the water's edge.

Wedged in a valley at the foot of the active Tungurahua volcano, Baños has built a reputation as Ecuador's adventure-sports hub, with canyoning, white-water rafting, mountain biking and Andes-edge zip-lining all based out of town.

The 'Route of the Waterfalls' cycling or driving route strings together a dozen cascades, including Pailón del Diablo's thundering drop into a narrow gorge.

Ecuador's third-largest city is also its most polished colonial one, with blue-domed cathedrals, riverside promenades along the Tomebamba, and a compact historic core awarded UNESCO status for its well-preserved Spanish colonial grid.

It's also the traditional home of the (misleadingly named) Panama hat, and workshops around the city still weave them by hand.

An hour's drive from Quito, Mindo drops into misty cloud forest thick with orchids, hummingbirds and over 500 recorded bird species, making it one of Ecuador's top birdwatching destinations without the remoteness of the Amazon.

Canopy zip-lines, tubing down the Mindo River and butterfly farms round out a more moderate adventure-tourism scene, geared as much toward wildlife-watching as adrenaline.

Nicknamed for the near-vertical rock face it descends, this short but dramatic railway uses a series of switchbacks to drop the train down a mountainside once considered one of the most difficult stretches of track ever built.

Built in the early 1900s to link the Andean highlands to the coast, it's now run as a heritage tourist ride between Alausí and Sibambe, with views down the gorge that made the engineering feat necessary.