Ecuador

Diversity and history at the palm of your hand

Compact and diverse, Ecuador is like a tasting menu for South America. There are Andean mountains, complete with glacial volcanoes. At Otavalo, site of the largest market in South America, Ecuador's numerous indigenous groups come to barter for both crafts and staples. There are Amazonian jungles and charming colonial cities, like cobblestoned Cuenca. Best of all, all these flavours are packed together, so you can be in the jungle in the morning and at the foot of a glacier by the evening. Ecuador also has one gem found nowhere else: the pristine and fragile Galápagos Islands, made famous through the writings of Charles Darwin.