Straddled across the Andes on the most westerly point of south America. Between Colombia and Peru, Ecuador is the smallest of the Andean countries.

Ecuador has a long a varied culture for such a small country. But its culture has been forgotten in the midst of more prominent cultures in neighboring Peru and Colombia.
The republic of Ecuador took it's name in the early 1800 from the equatorial line that runs through its heart. As far as the rest of the world was corncerned , this geographical peculiarity will long remain Ecuador's major claim to fame

The Andes divide the country into three regions, the coastal plain, known as the costa, the Andean mountains, known as the Sierra, and the Amazon jungle or Oriente. The fourth region is the Galapagos Islands.These is a group of volcanic islands located in the Pacific Ocean some 620 miles due west of mainland. For outsiders the Galapagos Islands are consider a giant natural laboratory. This trend started in 1835 when Charles Darwin studied wildlife in the Galapagos Islands. And wrote his Theory on Evolution based on his findings at the Islands.

 

for many years travellers from around the world came to Ecuador and published adventure-spiced volumes about their experiences, recounting a land of fantastic animals, iced-capped volcanoes, and impenetrable Amazonian jungle.

Being right on the ecuator, Eucador lacks the four seasons of the temperate zones. But because of the high altitude of the Andes every region has a very differentiate weather.The landscapes contains an exquisite array of volcanoes, water , valleys and tropical forest. As a tourist destination Ecuador is one of the safest countries to travel to in Latin America. It is also very affordable and its people is easy going and genuinely welcome tourists.

 

The population of Ecuadoris around 13 million, about half of whom live in the cities. The country is divided into 21 provinces, many of them named after mountains (Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Pichincha) The capital is Quito, situated in the Northern sierra at an altitude of 2800 meters. It has 1.5 million people. Guayaquil is the largest city with a population nearing 2 million.