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HISTORY

Exactly how and when the Americas were populated is still debated, but most authorities accept that humans first migrated from Asia over the Bering land bridge, formed by low sea levels during the last Ice Age, or along the coast aided by prevailing currents, between 40,000 and 12,000 years ago. The earliest evidence of human presence in Ecuador was discovered east of Quito at the El Inga archeological site and dates back to around 8000 BC.

Early cultures

Around this time, small hunter-gatherer communities collected seeds, berries, roots, insects and reptile eggs from the valley forests and roamed the high grasslands for bigger game. On the coast at about this time other hunter-gatherer groups of the Las Vegas culture were emerging around the Santa Elena peninsula, and by 6000 BC they began seasonal cultivation of food crops and cotton – becoming Ecuador’s first known agriculturists.

The Formative Period

Semi-permanent settlements and the fashioning of tools from polished stone laid the basis for the Valdivia culture, which blossomed around 3500 BC and spread across the coast to southern Esmeraldas and beyond over the next 2000 years, dominating the early Formative Period (4000–400 BC). The Valdivia culture is best known for its ceramics – among the oldest found in South America – especially its Venus figurines, stylized miniatures of women. They lived in oval, wood-and-thatch houses surrounding a central square, in villages strung along the coast and around river plains, where the soil was fertile enough to grow maize, cotton, cassava, peppers and kidney beans.

  The Machalilla culture (1500–800 BC) that followed preferred rectangular structures on stilts and practised skull deformation as a sign of status. They were more expert than their Valdivia counterparts at fishing and had surplus stores for trading with neighbouring groups. Their ceramic flasks are similar to those made by the Cotocollao, Cerro Narrío and Upano cultures, suggesting there was contact between them. Based around the Quito area, the Cotocollao people traded agricultural produce for coastal cotton, while the Cerro Narrío site in the southern sierra was an important trading centre between the coast and the Upano group based around Volcán Sangay in the upper Amazon basin. This communication across the regions seems to have intensified with the Chorrera culture (900–300 BC), which flourished on the coast at the close of the Formative Period. They were sophisticated people who crafted some of the most beautiful ceramics of that age, distinctive for their iridescent sheen.

The Regional Development Period

The subsequent Regional Development Period (300 BC–800 AD) saw a splintering of cultures and the appearance of highly stratified societies. The driving force behind these changes was a burgeoning economy and the related interaction between cultures. As trading routes sprang up along the coast, seafaring cultures such as the Bahía (from south of Bahía de Caráquez, dating from 500 BC to 650 AD), Jama-Coaque (north of Bahía, from 350 BC to 1540 AD) and Guangala (Guayas coast from 100 BC to 800 AD) transported their wares on balsawood rafts with cotton sails. The merchants of these cultures were part of the elite, acting as diplomats and facilitators securing necessary goods from afar. The merchants’ most treasured possession was the deep-crimson spondylus (thorny oyster) shell, harvested from a depth of 20–60m by highly skilled fishermen. Prized ornaments and symbols of fertility, the shells were also a kind of universal currency. Such was the range of these traders that ceramics representing them – sitting basketmen figures, often adorned with necklaces, bracelets and earrings, with outsized baskets on their backs – have been found on the Pacific coast from Ecuador to Central America.

  Meanwhile, in northern Esmeraldas and stretching into Colombia, the culture of La Tolita (500 BC–500 AD) occupied one of the prime religious and trading centres on the South American coast, thought to have been on the island of La Tolita, in the mangroves near present-day San Lorenzo. Traders, craftsmen and worshippers from different regions swarmed to the site, and the cross-fertilization of ideas led to the creation of exquisite ceramic and metalwork.

The Integration Period

In the Integration Period (800–1480 AD), when political leaders and chiefs (curacas) of local territories, defined through frequent skirmishes, exacted tribute and levied taxes from their communities, agricultural productivity surged through improved techniques in irrigation and terracing, and trading continued to boom. On the coast the Manteño-Huancavilca culture (500 BC–1540 AD), occupying land from the Gulf of Guayaquil to Bahía de Caráquez, continued the seafaring traditions of their coastal forebears, while also producing distinctive artefacts like ceremonial U-shaped chairs supported by human or animal figures, and black ceramics. To their north, people such as the Nigua, Chachi, Campaz, Caraque and Malaba continued to live by hunting, fishing and farming small agricultural plots. Inland, to the south, the Chono – the ancestors of the Tsáchila (or Colorados) of today, defined archeologically as the Milagro-Quevedo culture – were known for fine weavings and gold adornments such as nose rings, headbands and breastplates. They also frequently warred with the fierce Puná, who occupied the island of the same name in the Gulf of Guayaquil.

The highlands

In the highlands at this time, the major population groups occupied the elevated valley basins between the western and eastern cordilleras of the Andes, each basin separated from the next by mountainous nudos, “knots” where the cordilleras tie together. From north to south these were the Pasto, occupying southern Colombia and Carchi; the Cara (or Caranqui), living around Ibarra, Otavalo and Cayambe, and responsible for enormous ceremonial centres such as the one at Cochasquí; the Panzaleo (also called the Quito), who inhabited the Quito valley, Cotopaxi and Tungarahua, and did much trade with the Quijo in the Oriente; the Puruhá, of the Chimborazo region; the Cañari, great gold and copper craftspeople who dominated the southern sierra; and the Palta, a tribe whose major centre was Saraguro near Loja and who had strong links with the Amazonian group, the Shuar.

The Incas

In around 1200 the Incas were an unremarkable sierra people occupying Peru’s Cusco valley. After a string of military victories over neighbouring tribes in the fifteenth century, they grew into one of South America’s most sophisticated civilizations. In about 1450 the Tupac Yupanqui, son and later successor of the Inca Pachacutec, set out to conquer present-day Ecuador with a force of 200,000 men. He brushed aside the Palta in the south, but met fierce resistance from the Cañari, and the fighting devastated the whole region. The Cañari had been so impressive that when they were beaten many were recruited into the Inca professional army. The Cara in the north were even more bellicose, and managed to keep the invaders at bay for years before a terrible massacre at Laguna Yahuarcocha around 1520, led by Huayna Capac, Tupac Yupanqui’s son.

  At its height in the early sixteenth century, the Inca Empire extended from Chile and the Argentine Andes to southern Colombia, a total area of some 980,000 square kilometres. It was a highly organized and efficient society that built great stone palaces, temples, observatories, storehouses and fortresses using masonry techniques of breathtaking ingenuity. Just as impressive was its administrative system, allowing a relatively small number of people to hold sway over huge areas.

Inca rule

Indirect rule was imposed on the conquered regions, with the local chief allowed to remain in power as long as he acknowledged the divine sovereignty of the Inca emperor. Lands were divided between the Incas (for the king, nobility and army), the religious establishment (for sacrifices, ceremonies and the priesthood) and the local communities, and tribute was paid in the cultivation of the imperial lands. Each year, subjects also had to honour the mita, a labour obligation requiring them to spend time working in the army or on public works. A shrewd policy stipulated that the community could not be taxed on its own produce, a measure that did much to ensure contentment and stability. Any troublesome subjects were forcibly resettled hundreds of miles away, with indoctrinated and acculturated colonists brought in as replacements.

  Considering that the Incas were rulers in what is now southern Ecuador for no more than seventy years, and in northern Ecuador for only thirty years, they had an enormous impact on the region. New urban and ceremonial centres were built, such as Tomebamba (now buried beneath Cuenca) and Quito, with roads connecting them to the rest of the empire, and fortresses were erected at strategic points across the country, as at Ingapirca. The language of the Incas, Kichwa, was imposed on the defeated population and it’s still spoken in various forms (as Quichua or Kichwa) by the majority of Ecuador’s indígenas. The Incas also introduced sweet potatoes, peanuts and other crops, and drove large herds of llamas north from Peru for their wool and meat.

Civil war

By 1525 Huayna Capac was looking to establish a second capital at Quito or Tomebamba. Before he had a chance to act he was struck down by a virulent disease – probably smallpox, which had been brought to Central America by the Spanish and had swiftly spread southwards. Huayna Capac’s likely heir also died from the disease and in the resulting confusion two other sons took charge of the empire: Huáscar, who, ruling the south from Cusco, claimed he was the chosen successor; and Atahualpa, who asserted he’d been assigned the north and governed from Quito. Within a few years, friction between the two brothers erupted into a full-blown civil war, but Atahualpa had the advantage as the bulk of the imperial army was still in the north and under his command. Their forces clashed at Ambato, a pitched battle where more than 30,000 soldiers from both sides were killed. Atahualpa drove his brother south, laying waste to Tomebamba and the Cañari lands in revenge for their support of his enemy. With his superior troops, Atahualpa eventually got the upper hand, but even before he had heard of his generals’ final victory over Huáscar in Cusco, news reached him of a small band of bearded strangers that had landed on the coast nearby.

The Spanish Conquest

In 1526 the Spanish pilot Bartolomé Ruiz sailed down the Ecuadorian coast on a reconnaissance mission and, near Salango, captured a large Manta merchant vessel laden with gold, silver and emeralds. His report convinced Francisco Pizarro that there were great riches to be had on the continent. After obtaining royal approval, Pizarro set sail from Panama in December 1530 with 180 men and 37 horses, landing at Tumbes in northern Peru in May 1532, with a few more troops brought by two other hardy campaigners, Sebastián de Benalcázar and Hernando de Soto. The Inca city, which marked the northernmost limits of the empire on the coast, lay in ruins from the civil war. The Spanish, learning that the civilization had been in the grip of a terrible conflict, saw the perfect opportunity for conquest.

The massacre at Cajamarca

Pumped up by his victory over Huáscar’s army, Atahualpa didn’t regard the Spaniard’s straggly band of a few hundred as much of a threat – even with their horses, an unknown quantity to the Incas. In a fatal miscalculation, the new emperor invited them to a meeting at Cajamarca, letting them past countless guardposts and strongholds and over mountainous terrain that would have been too steep for cavalry attacks. A day after his arrival in Cajamarca, Pizarro launched a surprise attack, taking Atahualpa hostage and massacring thousands of Inca soldiers and nobles. Atahualpa offered to fill a room with gold and two huts with silver, in return for which Pizarro promised to restore him to his kingdom at Quito. Within a few months, six metric tons of gold and almost 12 tons of silver had been melted down, making rich men of the conquistadors. Nevertheless, they broke their promise and, fearing a counterattack, swiftly condemned Atahualpa to be burnt alive – a terrifying prospect for someone who believed his body must be preserved for passage into the afterlife – unless he became a Christian. In July 1533 the weeping Inca was baptized and then garrotted.

The race to Quito

The Spanish quickly took Cusco and southern Peru, and then turned their attention to Quito and the northern empire, (modern Ecuador) – a race was on to find the suspected treasures of its cities. In March 1534, the merciless governor of Guatemala, Pedro de Alvarado, gathered a formidable army and landed on the Ecuadorian coast in the Manta area. Despite torturing natives to find the best route into the highlands, he ended up going over the highest and most treacherous pass near Chimborazo, losing many men along the way, as well as the race to Quito.

  Sebastián de Benalcázar, meanwhile, had got wind of Alvarado’s expedition early on, and swiftly summoned his own forces together, riding across the bleak Peruvian coast onto the Inca highway to Quito. In Tomebamba he forged an alliance with the Cañari, who were bent on exacting revenge for years of Inca subjugation. A couple of large Inca armies were still mobilized in the north, and in the cold páramo grasslands at Teocajas above Tomebamba, the tenacious Inca general Rumiñahui prepared his 50,000 troops for attack. They fought bravely but it was clear it would take a miracle to beat the Spanish and their horses. Rumiñahui battled with Benalcázar all the way to Quito and before the Spanish could get there he removed the treasures and torched the palaces and food stores. Then, joining forces with another general, Zopozopagua, he launched a night attack on the Spanish encamped in the city, but was again thwarted. Eventually both Rumiñahui and Zopozopagua were caught, tortured and executed. Quisquis, the last of Atahualpa’s great generals, valiantly fought his way from southern Ecuador to Quito, but when he found the city had already been taken, his army mutinied, hacking him to pieces rather than facing death on the battlefields.

The founding of San Francisco de Quito

In August 1534 the Spanish founded the city of San Francisco de Quito on the charred remains of the Inca capital, and a few months later they had conquered all of the northern part of the Inca Empire. The inaccessible north coast and much of the Oriente were deemed too difficult and unproductive to colonize and stayed out of their control for much of the colonial era. Still, the conquest had a devastating effect on the native populations of Ecuador through war, forced labour and Old World diseases. Smallpox, measles, the plague and influenza cut the aboriginal population to 200,000 by the end of the sixteenth century, down from 1.5 million.

The Colonial era

The Spanish were quick to consolidate their victories, with the Crown parcelling out land to the conquistadors in the form of encomiendas, grants that entitled the holders, the encomenderos, to a substantial tribute in cash, plus produce and labour from the indígenas who happened to live there. In return, the encomenderos were entrusted with converting their charges to Christianity, a task that was only a partial success; in many cases the indígenas merely superimposed Catholic imagery onto their existing beliefs, but eventually the two traditions fused in a syncretism that can still be seen today.

  The encomienda system grafted easily onto the old Inca order, and the encomenderos were soon the elite of the region, which became the Audiencia de Quito in 1563. Roughly corresponding to modern-day Ecuador, the audiencia had rather vague boundaries, but included a huge swath of the Amazon following Francisco de Orellana’s voyage. It also enjoyed legal autonomy from Lima and direct links to Madrid, even though it was still a part of the Viceroyalty of Peru. During the early 1600s, there were more than 500 encomiendas in the audiencia, run on the labour of about half the region’s indígenas, who were effectively serfs on these estates.

  Another quarter of the area’s indígenas deserted the productive encomienda lands for the undesirable páramo and lowland forests, but they were rounded up at the end of the century and resettled in purpose-built “Indian towns”, or reducciones, where colonists could more easily collect tribute and exploit their labour.

The mita and the rise of haciendas

The Spanish also borrowed – and corrupted – another Inca institution, the mita, a system that required these supposedly free indígenas to work for a year according to the needs of the colony. These workers, the mitayos, received a small wage but it was invariably less than the amount they owed their employers for subsistence purchases. Soon the mita system descended into debt slavery, as the mitayos worked indefinitely to pay off their unending deficits – which their children would inherit, so trapping them, too. The audiencia had such poor mineral resources – the small gold and silver deposits around Cuenca and Loja were exhausted by the end of the sixteenth century – that the mitayos were at least spared the agonies of working in mines: millions of their contemporaries died in mines in Peru and Bolivia. Instead, most of the indigenous labourers were involved in agriculture and textiles.

  Events of the 1690s saw an abrupt halt to the economic success, as another wave of epidemics wiped out a third to half of the indigenous population, droughts destroyed harvests and severe earthquakes shook the region. This triggered the demise of the encomiendas, which were replaced by large private estates, or haciendas, but for the indígenas the new system of huasipungo brought little relief. In return for their labour on the haciendas, they were entitled to farm tiny plots of land in their spare moments, where they were expected to grow all their own food.

Life on the coast

Around a quarter of the remaining indigenous population escaped the rule of the Spanish altogether by living in the inaccessible tropical forests of lowland Oriente or the north coast, the latter area under the control of a black and zambo (mixed black and indigenous) population, largely the descendants of escaped slaves, brought to work on the coastal plantations or fight in the Spanish army. The south coast had only a tiny workforce available, as more than 95 percent of the natives had been wiped out by disease, but even so, Guayaquil, founded by Benalcázar in 1535, was developing into an important trade and shipbuilding centre.

Shifting attitudes

In the early 1700s the Bourbon kings of Spain, who had replaced the Hapsburg dynasty, were determined to tighten their grip over their American territories. They embarked on a strategy of economic and administrative reform intended to boost productivity, such as transferring the Quito audiencia to the newly established Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada, with its capital at Bogotá, Colombia, in 1717 (an arrangement that lasted three years), and then again in 1739. The expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 by Charles III only damaged further the weak highland economy. The Jesuits – as well as teaching Christianity to the indígenas – had run the best schools and most productive and profitable workshops in the audiencia, but their very success had made them unpopular with the Crown. Yet while the highland textile economy suffered severe depression, the cacao industry on the coast was flourishing, with the commodity becoming the colony’s largest export.

  By the middle of the eighteenth century, the criollos – Spanish born in the colonies – were nursing a growing resentment against the motherland that wasn’t helped by the economic situation. High taxes, continual interference from Spain and the fact that all the best jobs still went to the peninsulares – Spanish-born newcomers – only added to the discontent. At the same time, the Enlightenment was opening up new lines of political and philosophical thought in Europe, which filtered down into the upper-class households of the audiencia, and sharply contradicted the colony’s semi-feudal organization. Scientific expeditions were a source of new knowledge, such as Charles-Marie de La Condamine’s mission (1736–45) to discern the shape of the Earth, which he did by measuring a degree of latitude on the equator north of Quito.

  One of the first to articulate the new influences was Eugenio Espejo, an exceptional man who, despite being born of indígena and mulatto parents in a deeply racist society, obtained a university degree and became an outstanding doctor, lawyer, essayist and satirist. His outspoken views on republicanism and democracy cost him his life – he died in jail in 1795 – but he’s still honoured as the progenitor of the country’s independence movement.

The birth of the republic

Napoleon’s successful invasion of Spain in 1808 sent shockwaves throughout its New World colonies. On August 10, 1809, a short-lived junta in support of the deposed king, Ferdinand VII, was established in Quito, but it failed in a matter of weeks when the backing of the rest of the audiencia was not forthcoming. Despite assurances of pardons, those involved were rounded up and sentenced to death. In August 1810, an incensed public stormed the prison but the guards massacred the junta’s leaders before they could be freed. Even so, the disturbances led to a new junta, which ambitiously declared the independence of the audiencia in 1811, whether the rest of the colony was ready for it or not. With a band of ill-disciplined troops, the new government launched a foolhardy attack against the well-trained Spanish forces and were consequently routed at Ibarra in 1812.

  After that defeat, it wasn’t until 1820 that the independence movement regained momentum – this time in Guayaquil, led by José Joaquín de Olmedo, an intellectual and shrewd politician – and independence was declared on October 9. Urgent requests for assistance were immediately sent to the Liberator Simón Bolívar, who was marching south from Venezuela, and José de San Martín, who was sweeping north from Argentina, crushing the Spanish armies as they went. Bolívar quickly dispatched his best general, Antonio José de Sucre, with a force of seven hundred men. Sucre scored a great victory at Guayaquil, but was thwarted at Ambato, until reinforcements sent by San Martín enabled him to push on to Quito. On May 24, 1822, he won the decisive Battle of Pichincha, and five days later the old audiencia became the Department of the South in a new autonomous state, Gran Colombia, roughly corresponding to the combined territories of Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and Venezuela today.

A time of turbulence

The early years of the republic were turbulent, and disagreements over the border with Peru escalated into armed conflict in 1828. Guayaquil suffered extensive damage, but Sucre and General Juan José Flores defeated the Peruvian forces at the Battle of Tarqui in 1829. A year later, on May 13, following Venezuela’s split from Gran Colombia, Quito representatives also decided to declare their own republic, naming it Ecuador, after its position on the equator, and General Flores, a Venezuelan by birth who had married into the Quito aristocracy, became the first president.

  The new nation didn’t gel well at all. In the sierra the Conservative land-owning elites were happy to keep the colonial system in operation, while on the coast the Liberal merchant classes, rich on the country’s sole export commodity, cacao, wanted free trade, lower taxes and a break with the old order. This dualism between the regions – and their great cities, Quito and Guayaquil – has coloured the country ever since.

  Flores soon found his heavy-handed and Quito-oriented administration desperately unpopular on the coast, and cannily arranged for the guayaquileño politician Vicente Rocafuerte to take the second term. Meanwhile Flores lurked in the background, pulling the strings as head of the military, and became president again from 1839 to 1845, when he was ousted by a junta from the coast. For the next fifteen years, the country descended into a political mire, with bitter fighting between the regions and the seat of government moving from Quito to Guayaquil to Riobamba and then back to Guayaquil. Eleven presidents and juntas followed each other in power, the most successful being led by the Liberal General José María Urbina, who ruled with an iron fist from 1851 to 1856 and managed to abolish slavery within a week of the coup that swept him to the presidency. Moreover, he had strongly encouraged his predecessor, General Francisco Robles, to axe the tribute the indígenas were still being forced to pay after three centuries of abuse.

The Terrible Year

The turmoil of the era culminated in 1859 – later known as the Terrible Year – when the strain between the regions finally shattered the country: Quito set up a provisional government, Cuenca declared itself autonomous, Loja became a federal district and, worst of all, Guayaquil, led by General Guillermo Franco, signed itself away to Peruvian control. Peru invaded and blockaded the port, while Colombia hungrily eyed the rest of Ecuador for itself.

Conservative rule: 1861–95

Aiming to set the republic right, Gabriel García Moreno quashed the various rebellions with the help of Flores and seized power as president in 1861. Born into an elite but economically struggling family in Guayaquil, García Moreno was educated in Quito and Europe and was both fiercely Conservative and a devout Catholic. He saw the country’s salvation in the Church, and set about strengthening its position, establishing it as the state religion, signing control over to the Vatican, founding schools staffed only by Catholics, dedicating the republic to the “Sacred Heart of Jesus” and making Catholicism a prerequisite for citizenship. He was also ruthless with his many opponents, crushing them and several coup attempts.

  His presidency helped foster growth in agriculture and industry, initiating a much-needed programme of road-building and beginning the Quito–Guayaquil railway, as well as creating the first national currency. Nevertheless, he was hated by the Liberals for his authoritarianism and for strengthening the Church. One of the loudest critics was the writer, Juan Montalvo, who vilified his policies from the safety of self-imposed exile. In 1875, just after García Moreno had been elected to his third term of office, an assassin murdered the president on the steps of the Palacio de Gobierno.

An export boom

After García Moreno’s death, Conservative power waned and an uprising brought to power the military dictator General Ignacio de Veintimilla, a man who was surprisingly popular, perhaps for his large-scale public works programmes and boisterous public fiestas. From 1884 to 1895 the country returned to constitutional governments, overseen by three progressive Conservative presidents who navigated between radical Conservatism and Liberalism. Yet their success in bridging the divide was limited, and all the while the Liberals were accruing power and influence as the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw phenomenal growth in Ecuador’s exports. For a time, the country was the world’s leading producer of cacao, and coffee, tagua nuts and Panama hats were also doing well – products all based on the coast around Guayaquil – and much of the money filled Liberal coffers.

The Liberal era: 1895–1925

A committed revolutionary and Liberal, Eloy Alfaro had been involved in guerrilla skirmishes with García Moreno’s Conservative forces since his early 20s. He’d already fled the country twice before Liberal cacao lords sought his return and funded a military coup that brought him to power in 1895. Alfaro immediately set about undoing García Moreno’s policies and began measures that would permanently weaken the Catholic Church. In his two terms as president (1897–1901 and 1906–11), Alfaro defined the radical Liberal position, secularizing the state and education, expelling foreign clergy, instituting civil marriage and divorce and cutting links with the Vatican. Like García Moreno however, he ploughed money into public works and saw through the completion of the Quito–Guayaquil railway.

  Yet he was under attack from both Conservatives and Liberal party factions sympathetic to his rival General Leonidas Plaza (president 1901–05 and 1912–16). To fend off the revolts, largely instigated by Conservative rebels with the backing of the Church, Alfaro allocated forty percent of his entire budget to military expenditure. The split within the Liberal camp worsened, and when Alfaro’s chosen presidential successor, Emilio Estrada, died suddenly just after his inauguration in 1911, the country fell into a bloody civil war. A year later, Plaza’s forces defeated Alfaro, and he and his supporters were transported to Quito, where they were murdered, dragged through the streets and burnt in the Parque Ejido. One good thing to come out of this period was the 1918 scrapping of debtor imprisonment that ended the colonial system of debt peonage for the indígenas.

The rise of La Argolla

The civil war had left the state weakened and cash-strapped, allowing power to shift to la argolla, a “ring” of wealthy cacao merchants and bankers, underpinned by the private Banco Comercial and Agrícola in Guayaquil. The bank provided loans to a succession of ailing administrations at the expense of rocketing inflation rates, and became so influential that it was said that any politician needed its full backing to be successful.

  In the 1920s Ecuador descended into an economic crisis (a symptom of this arrangement) as well as crippling inflation and a severe slump in cacao production. A devastating blight damaged the crop, and cacao prices plunged as the market was swamped by new producers, especially British colonies in Africa. The poor were hit very badly, and uprisings – one in 1922 by workers in Guayaquil and another in 1923 by indígena peasants on a highland estate – were suppressed with massacres. The bloodless Revolución Juliana of 1925 effectively marked the end of the old Liberal–Conservative tug-of-war and ushered in a disoriented era of coups and overthrows.

Political crisis: 1925–47

After two swift juntas, the military handed power to Isidro Ayora in 1926, who embarked on a programme of reforms, including the creation of the Banco Central in Quito to smash the influence of la argolla. The new bank couldn’t temper the rate of inflation, and popular discontent forced Ayora’s resignation in 1931. Fuelled by the woeful economic condition at home and the Great Depression worldwide, the country’s political cohesion finally crumbled away. During the 1930s a total of fourteen men took the presidency, and from 1925 to 1948 Ecuador had a total of 27 different governments.

  Out of the turbulence of this era came the first of populist José María Velasco Ibarra’s five presidential terms, which began in 1934 and lasted less than a year, thanks to his removal by the military when he tried to assume dictatorial powers; in his career, he was to be overthrown by the army three more times. He went into exile until the 1940s, and chaos reigned.

The Rio Protocol

In 1941, while pro-government troops were tied up in Quito defending the presidency of Carlos Arroyo del Río, Peru invaded, marching north and west through the Amazonian jungle and occupying the provinces of El Oro and Loja in the south. The occupation only ended after the nations signed the Rio Protocol of January 1942, forcing Ecuador to cede 200,000 square kilometres – almost half the land it claimed. Although much of the disputed territory was effectively already under Peruvian rather than Ecuadorian control, the loss was a huge blow to national pride. The move continued to be disputed by Ecuador, thanks to an irregularity in the treaty, and the territory was included on all Ecuadorian maps until a peace treaty of 1998 between the two countries finally brought the issue to a close.

  Velasco ousted the disgraced Arroyo in 1944, but was deposed by the military in 1947. Three presidents soon came and went before Galo Plaza Lasso took the helm in 1948, adding some much-needed stability.

Prosperity and decline: 1948–72

Galo Plaza Lasso was the son of the former Liberal president Leonidas Plaza, but he also had strong links with the powerful Conservative families in the sierra and so was well placed to form a stable government. Committed to democracy, he strove for freedom of speech and of the press, and as a fair and popular president, he was the first since 1924 to complete his term of office.

The banana boom

The stability Plaza had helped foster was due in large part to economic prosperity brought on by the banana boom. After World War II the world demand for bananas rocketed, and while the traditional exporters in the Caribbean and Central America had trouble with crop diseases, Ecuador had huge parcels of ex-cacao land ready to be given over to bananas – and soon the country became the world’s largest exporter, a position it retains today. Government reserves brimmed over and money was invested in infrastructure to open up more areas of the countryside to banana farms. Large areas around Santo Domingo were cleared for agriculture, and colonists flooded to the coast – between 1942 and 1962, the population in the region more than doubled. As the industry was dominated by small and medium-sized farms, the new wealth spread through a wider portion of society than it had during the cacao boom.

Unemployment and strikes

The prosperity and wellbeing was such that Velasco even managed to complete his third term in office (1952–56), the only one that he did. His successor Camilo Ponce Enríquez also saw his term through, but in the late 1950s, as world demand for bananas slumped, unemployment began to rise and people took to the streets in protest.

  Once again, the master-populist Velasco was elected, thanks to his oratory and promise of support for the urban poor. Exploiting the popularity of the recent Cuban revolution, he laced his speeches with anti-US attacks and won the support of the Ecuadorian left. Before long, pressure from the US on Latin America to cut ties with Cuba heightened tensions between leftists and anti-communists. Hopes that the country had at last achieved political maturity were dashed as Velasco’s coalition disintegrated under the strain, and rival groups resorted to violence. In a desperate search for revenue, Velasco put taxes on consumer items, sparking strikes across the whole country.

The military junta

As a Cuba-style revolution threatened, the military (with probable CIA interference) installed Velasco’s vice–president, Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy, in 1961, but he soon became unpopular with the establishment for refusing to sever links with Cuba and was branded a communist. The damage to his credibility had been done by the time he relented in 1962, but by then he was a broken man. A year later a military junta took power, jailing the opposition and suppressing the left, though it did pass the 1964 Agrarian Reform Law, which at last brought the huasipungo system to an end, even if it didn’t achieve a far-reaching redistribution of land. As banana prices plummeted in 1965, the junta ran up against serious cash-flow problems and was forced to step down the following year.

Velasco returns

Elections in 1968 brought Velasco back to power by the slenderest of margins. The economic situation was so serious that he was forced to devalue the sucre (Ecuador’s then currency) and raise import tariffs, but to temper these measures, he seized US fishing boats found inside Ecuador’s territorial limits, the so-called tuna war. After two years, he assumed dictatorial powers and clung to power until his overthrow by the military in 1972.

Military control and the oil boom: 1972–79

The military, led by General Guillermo Rodríguez Lara, seized control because it was anxious that the flighty populist, Assad Bucaram, former mayor of Guayaquil, would be victorious in the upcoming elections, and because it aimed to be the custodian of the large oil reserves found in the Oriente. Texaco’s explorations in 1967 had struck rich, locating high-quality oil fields near Lago Agrio, and by 1971 more than twenty international companies had swarmed to the Oriente on the scent of a fortune.

  The junta was aggressively leftist-nationalist and determined that the state should get as much from the oil boom as possible. Contracts with foreign companies were renegotiated, a state-owned petroleum company was set up, and in 1973 Ecuador joined OPEC. Money flooded into the public sector, stimulating employment, industrialization, economic growth and urbanization. The Oriente infrastructure was revolutionized, and in 1971 Texaco built a road to Lago Agrio, the first to leave the eastern Andean foothills. To keep Colombia or Peru from getting ideas about the oil-rich lands, colonists such as military conscripts were encouraged into the region by the thousands. The huge environmental cost of all the colonization and oil-industry activity is still being felt today.

Debts and taxes

The junta pushed its nationalist stance too far when it declared that the state’s stake in Texaco operations should be upped to 51 percent, thus discouraging further foreign investment and prospecting. Oil production fell by a fifth, but this was temporarily offset by a sharp rise in global prices. Yet even with the huge increases in revenues and booming economy, the government managed to overspend and rack up some significant debts. Trying to redress the balance, it slapped sixty percent duty on luxury imports, upsetting the private sector and sparking a failed coup. Rodríguez Lara’s position was weakened enough for a second, bloodless coup in 1976, led by a triumvirate of military commanders, who sought to return government to civilian rule, but on their terms.

The return to democracy: 1979–87

In August 1979, the military could no longer deny power to the young centre-left coalition candidate, Jaime Roldós Aguilera, after his landslide election victory three months earlier and heavy pressure from US President Jimmy Carter. Since the oil boom, the economic landscape of the country had transformed: per-capita income was now five times greater than before 1972, employment was up by ten percent, and a new urban middle class had emerged. Despite the new wealth, inequality remained entrenched. Roldós’s plans for wide-ranging structural reforms fell through as a bitter rivalry developed between him and his party associate and the uncle of his wife, Bucaram, the leader of congress.

  By 1981 the economic situation was again precarious, with an enormous budget deficit, in large part due to overspending by Bucaram’s congress. Worse still, trouble flared up on the Peruvian border, adding to the financial burden. Then, in May, three months after a ceasefire with Peru and only weeks after the presentation of a revolutionary law that would redistribute oil wealth to the people, Roldós was killed in an airplane crash near Loja. Many suspected it was an assassination, and, in the eyes of the Roldós family, the accident has never been satisfactorily investigated.

A period of austerity

Roldós’s vice-president Osvaldo Hurtado Larrea stepped in and tried to push on with the reform programme, but the economic situation rapidly deteriorated. Oil prices fell sharply, and gross domestic product shrank by more than three percent; inflation soared, unemployment climbed, and there were four general strikes; El Niño floods caused $1 billion of damage, while blight ravaged highland potato crops. Still, Hurtado managed to take unpopular austerity measures to combat the $7 billion foreign debt, and secure constitutional elections and the transition of power to a second democratically elected government – the first time in almost 25 years.

The impact of neoliberalism

León Febres Cordero Rivadeneira and his centre-right coalition won the 1984 general election. Inspired by Reagan and Thatcher, the new government embarked on a neoliberal programme favouring free markets, foreign investment, exports and the roll-back of state power. Yet the government was plagued by allegations of corruption and human rights abuses, and as living costs rose, public disquiet grew. In 1986, shortly after a failed coup attempt by air-force general Frank Vargas, Febres Cordero was held hostage by Vargas supporters and threatened with death unless the general was released. The president immediately complied, an act perceived as cowardly by the public. To add to the country’s woes, in March 1987 a serious earthquake rocked the Oriente, killing hundreds, leaving tens of thousands homeless and destroying 40km of the Trans-Andean oil pipeline. The economy was crippled as oil production stopped for six months, and Febres Cordero was forced to default on payment of foreign debts totalling more than $10 billion.

The Democratic Left

The failure of right-wing politics led to social democrat Rodrigo Borja Cevallo winning a convincing victory with his Izquierda Democrática party (Democratic Left) in 1988. Borja’s reform programme (gradualismo) steered the country away from the policies of Febres Cordero and aimed to protect human rights and press freedom, boost literacy rates and improve relations with Peru. Yet runaway inflation led to a wave of strikes, and in 1990 an umbrella organization of the nation’s indigenous peoples, CONAIE, staged an uprising, calling for rights to land and territories, the right to self-government and creation of a multinational Ecuadorian state. The same year, twelve Waorani communities received territorial rights to land bordering the Parque Nacional Yasuní in the Oriente.

The return of the right

Desperate to fix the economy, the public switched its support back to the right, voting in Sixto Durán Ballén in 1992. He strove for modernization, privatization and reduction of state bureaucracy, but his administration was dogged by hostility from labour unions and CONAIE, as well as corruption scandals, and in 1995 his vice-president, Alberto Dahik, fled the country to avoid prosecution over mismanagement of intelligence funds.

Off the rails: 1996–2006

The 1996 elections brought a shock when outsider Abdalá Bucaram – the nephew of Asaad Bucaram and known as El Loco (the Madman) – won with an informal populist style, promising increased subsidies and a stronger public sector. His publicity stunts included releasing his own CD (“Madman in Love”), shaving off his Hitler-style moustache (he was an admirer) in an auction, and offering to pay Diego Maradona $1 million to play a football match in Ecuador. Before long, Bucaram betrayed his supporters with austerity measures that made utility prices skyrocket, and rumours of large-scale mismanagement of funds and corruption also began to circulate. In just a year, his popularity plummeted and trade unions called a general strike. Congress voted him out of office on grounds of “mental incapacity”, but Bucaram stubbornly clung on. For a few days in February 1997, Bucaram, vice-president Rosalía Arteaga and congressional leader Fabián Alarcón all claimed to be the rightful president. Meanwhile huge crowds gathered around the presidential palace calling for Bucaram’s removal. Ultimately, he fled to Panama, allegedly carrying suitcases stuffed with embezzled cash – reportedly he may have robbed the country of nearly $100 million.

Economic disarray

Fabián Alarcón muddled through the commotion as interim president, faced with economic stagnation and corruption allegations, and in 1998 the Harvard-educated mayor of Quito, Jamil Mahuad, beat Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador’s wealthiest banana baron and candidate of Bucaram’s party. After an amazing start, signing a peace treaty with Alberto Fujimori, ending decades of tension and hostility with Peru, nothing went right. The country’s finances were in disarray and even the government claimed it to be Ecuador’s worst economic crisis in seventy years, with inflation at around fifty percent, oil more expensive to produce than to sell and $2.6 billion of El Niño damage to deal with, including the devastation of the banana harvest.

  Despite paralysing strikes, Mahuad still pushed on with neoliberal austerity measures, terminating fuel subsidies – almost doubling the price of petrol, and quadrupling the cost of electricity. Just as it seemed the banking system was on the brink of collapse, he froze more than $3 billion of bank deposits – a measure that didn’t save banks from folding or stop a run on the sucre. Facing a foreign debt of $16 billion, Ecuador defaulted on a Brady-bond interest payment, the first country ever to do so.

The removal of Mahuad

By January 2000, Ecuador’s economy had shrunk by seven percent from the previous year, inflation was running higher than sixty percent and the sucre had devalued by almost three hundred percent. In a desperate bid to save his presidency and stop the economy from completely falling apart, Mahuad announced the resignation of his entire cabinet and plans to dollarize the national currency. CONAIE mobilized its supporters, and tens of thousands of indígenas filtered into Quito. On January 21, 2000, the military unit guarding Congress stepped aside and the indigenous groups stormed the building and announced the removal of Mahuad and the dissolution of Congress and the Supreme Court.

  Only hours later, the military junta called for vice-president Gustavo Noboa to take up the presidency; Mahuad went into exile. Noboa forged ahead with dollarization, implementing it in 2001 with the help of a $2 billion aid package. Though it helped economic stability and stopped hyperinflation, it came at the cost of rising prices and worsening conditions for the ever-increasing poor.

The rise and fall of Gutiérrez

In the 2002 elections, another outsider, Lucio Gutiérrez, an ex-colonel involved in the 2000 coup, won with the backing of indigenous groups and unions by pledging to root out corruption and reverse monetarist reforms. Once in power, it wasn’t long before he turned his back on his leftist supporters by cutting food subsidies and spending large chunks of oil revenue on servicing debt. As his national popularity plummeted, he managed to cling to power only through mercurial coalitions with a range of unlikely political groups.

  His unconstitutional dismissal of the Supreme Court in late 2004, with the aim of replacing judges with cronies who would drop criminal charges against Abdalá Bucaram, was widely criticized as a “dictatorial act” and led in April 2005 to mass demonstrations and the withdrawal of support by the armed forces. Congress voted to remove him from office, and he fled by helicopter, eventually finding asylum in Brazil. Claiming he had been illegally removed from power and that he would follow constitutional channels to get it back, he returned to Ecuador in October, whereupon he was arrested and imprisoned, only to be released in March 2006. His vice-president, Alfredo Palacio, was sworn in as interim president and held together the many pieces of the fractious political system as best he could until the 2006 elections.

Correa’s rule

After such instability, Ecuador sought a strong leader, like Rafael Correa, who became the country’s 56th president in 2007 after winning run-off elections the previous year. Describing himself as a humanist and socialist Catholic, Correa is a populist firebrand in the mould of Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Bolivia’s Evo Morales – anti-neoliberal, against foreign and particularly US interference in sovereign affairs, sceptical about the motives of the World Bank and IMF, and strongly in favour of social justice, redistribution of wealth and the welfare state. In 2008, Ecuadorians voted by a two-thirds majority to approve the country’s 20th constitution, which aimed to redress structural inequalities and bolster civil rights, allowing civil union for same-sex couples and free health care for the elderly. It also made Ecuador the first country in the world to extend “inalienable rights to nature”, in the declaration that nature “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution”.

Dealing with debt and foreign relations

The president, who trained as an economist in Belgium and the US, has not been afraid to throw his weight around. In December 2008, he claimed that foreign loans taken by previous regimes were “illegitimate” and defaulted on $3.2 billion in sovereign debt, but afterwards embarked on an aggressive borrowing programme, much like the 1970s military ruler. He renegotiated Ecuador’s contracts with oil multinationals, and expropriated numerous companies including two television channels from a group that also owned Filanbanco, one of the collapsed banks from the Mahuad era, but failed to privatize them to compensate those who lost their savings.

  Thanks to the unprecedented price of oil plus his borrowing, he embarked on a massive plan to pave and widen roads, build hydroelectric plants and new schools and universities. He has increased social spending, not least for the indigenous poor; having spent a year at a Salesian mission in Cotopaxi, he is a rarity as a Kichwa-speaking president. If relations with the US have been predictably strained, they could hardly be worse than those with Colombia. Correa cut diplomatic relations with Colombia after the Colombian military bombed a FARC base over the Ecuadorian border, unheard of even during wars with Peru (these have been since restored).

A second and third term

Correa’s populist, no-compromise stance and freewheeling spending pressed the right buttons at home. He was re-elected early in April 2009 with a majority vote, something that hadn’t happened in a first round for thirty years. It has not been plain sailing however. In September 2010, he dared protesting police to kill him, only to flee to a nearby hospital, from where he was extracted by the army. He insists in calling the event, which left several dead, a coup attempt, while coming up short on evidence.

  In 2011, a narrowly won referendum gave the president greater powers over the judiciary and to regulate the media, and a proposed constitutional reform was drafted to allow him to stand for election again. After spending some $250 billion over ten years in office, with the price of oil plummeting and debt payments accumulating, Correa backpedalled on the reform in November 2015, raising questions over who might succeed him in the 2017 elections.

  Since introducing the dollar, Ecuador has made important strides in reducing poverty and improving infrastructure. However, clouds over emerging market economies raise questions as to how sustainable progress will be.

The 2016 earthquake

In April 2016, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Ecuador’s northwest coast – the deadliest natural disaster to hit the country in decades. The area between Manta and Portoviejo in the south and Esmeraldas in the north was the hardest hit, but there was damage to buildings and a highway bridge as far south as Guayaquil. It is expected to take years to rebuild some of the worst-hit areas, so check ahead before travelling in the region.

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ART

In many ways, pre-Columbian art in Ecuador resembles modern artesanía, in its combination of function and aesthetic. What we understand as fine art didn’t make an appearance until after the Spanish conquest, when it was employed in the process of converting the native population to Catholicism, being central both as a means of religious instruction and to provide icons for worship in place of indigenous pagan idols.

The Quito School

The engine of artistic production in the new colony was the Quito School, founded by Franciscan friars in the 1530s, which taught indigenous people how to paint and carve in order to provide decoration for the new churches and monasteries. One of the key early exponents of painting was Fray Pedro Bedón (1556–1621), who had studied under the Italian Jesuit artist, Bernardo Bitti, himself the main source of the Renaissance and Mannerist styles of Spain, Flanders and Italy, Bedón taught local indígenas and mestizos to reproduce famous compositions from the Old World. The artworks were not mere copies, however, but imbued with a clearly discernible Andean flavour, reflecting the need to adapt images to local tastes.

The rise of secular painting

The last major Quito School artist, Manuel Samaniego (c.1767–1824), formed the bridge from religious to secular painting. He forsook the sombre, tenebrous tones of his predecessors, preferring a fresher, brighter and more colourful palette, and paid special attention to background landscapes. The career of his apprentice Antonio Salas (1795–1860) was bookended by religious commissions, but his most famous works define the early Independence period, being potent and striking portraits of the heroes and leaders of the age, including Simón Bolívar.

  He was also the patriarch of a large and accomplished artistic family, including Ramón Salas (c.1815–80), an early proponent of costumbrismo, where the focus is on everyday life. Such studies were a part of a growing interest in Ecuador itself, and a burgeoning pride in its land and people, which was beginning to find expression in the paintings of nineteenth-century artists. Ramón’s better-known half-brother, Rafael Salas (c.1824–1906), who was sent to be trained in Europe at an early age, was a leading figure in this direction, and among the country’s first to make landscape a subject in its own right. His works were surpassed only by Joaquín Pinto (1842–1906), a prodigy with little formal training, whose unrivalled eye for the unusual and charming repeatedly triumphed in landscapes and costumbrista tableaux. Landscapes achieved new heights of technical finesse under the brush of Rafael Troya (1845–1920), who studied under visiting German artists and draughtsmen and owed much to the naturalistic traditions of that country in his broad and idyllic panoramas.

The indigenismo movement

In the early twentieth century the picturesque costumbrismo sketches of local people, particularly of indígenas, took on much stronger political and social overtones, developing into the indigenismo movement, which articulated native culture and imagery in terms of social protest. Its leaders were Camilo Egas (1899–1962), Eduardo Kingman (1913–98) and Oswaldo Guayasamín (1919–99). Of this trinity of modern Ecuadorian masters, Guayasamín, the son of an indígena and a mestiza, now figures as the nation’s favourite and most famous artist, regarded as the true champion of the oppressed.

Avant-garde art and the Grupo VAN

Guayasamín’s domination of the art scene over the last few decades belies the richness of modern art in Ecuador, which has had links to a plethora of artistic movements and currents of thought. Manuel Rendón (1894–1982) grew up and trained in Paris and was exposed to new ideas, the avant-garde and non-figurative art from an early age. He won praise from artists as eminent as Matisse, Braque and Modigliani, and his exhibitions in Quito and Guayaquil in the late 1930s had a huge influence on later generations, along with the work of Araceli Gilbert (1913–93), an early Ecuadorian proponent of abstract and geometric art, and one of the country’s few female artists.

  Following their line, Enrique Tábara (b.1930) became a leader of the avant-garde and non-figurative art in Ecuador, a man who rubbed shoulders in Barcelona with Dadaists and Surrealists, and back home founded the influential Grupo VAN with the likes of Aníbal Villacís (b.1927), Estuardo Maldonado (b.1930), Hugo Cifuentes (1923–2000) and Luis Molinari (b.1929–94) in opposition to the heavy political social realism of Guayasamín and others. Other important figures include Juan Villafuerte (1945–77), whose prolific but short career included the celebrated “Transmutation Series” of monstrous and deformed figures designed to unsettle; Oswaldo Viteri (b.1931), who uses a wide variety of materials to explore mestizaje, the cultural mix of Ecuador; and Gonzalo Endara Crow (1936–96), whose distinctive paintings blended myth, folklore and naturalism.

The contemporary scene

More recently, the Artefactoría collective was founded in 1982 by Xavier Patiño, Jorge Velarde and Marcos Restrepo, loosely inspired by Surrealism. While native culture has been very important to modern Ecuadorian art, it’s notable that there have been relatively few well-known indigenous artists. One of them is Ramón Piaguaje (b.1962), a Secoya from the Cuyabeno area, who drew from childhood with his fingers in the sand and had no idea it was possible to create pictures in colour until an anthropologist supplied him with oils. He shot to fame after winning a major international prize with a beautiful depiction of his rainforest home.

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THE MAINLAND: GEOGRAPHY AND WILDLIFE

In terms of wildlife and geography Ecuador is one of the most diverse countries in the world. No larger than the US state of Nevada and around the same size as the UK, this diminutive country is home to more than 1600 species of birds, over 300 different mammals, 680 amphibians and reptiles, twenty thousand flowering plants and more than a million types of insect. The mainland comprises three geographical regions and an extraordinary variety of habitats and ecosystems. In the sierra, mountain páramos (high-altitude grasslands), volcanoes and the Andean mountains form the north–south spine of the country. To the east, the mountains slope down through primeval cloudforests into the tropical rainforests of the Amazon basin. On the west of the Andes, more cloudforests cloak the mountainsides down to the coast (costa, or litoral), which comprises agricultural lands, dry and tropical forests, lowland hills, beaches and mangrove swamps.

The sierra

Around 100 million years ago, the westward-moving South American tectonic plate collided with the eastward-moving Nazca plate, which holds the southern Pacific Ocean, and the Andes mountains rose along the edge of the South American landmass. In Ecuador, they consist of two parallel mountain chains, or cordilleras, separated by a broad central valley – which German explorer Alexander von Humboldt named the “Avenue of the Volcanoes” in 1802. This central valley is itself divided into a series of fertile basins, cut off from one another by “knots” of intermediate hills. The basins have been populated for hundreds of years – in several cases, thousands of years – and even today are home to almost half the country’s population.

  A relatively young mountain range, the sharp, jagged peaks of the Andes, reaching almost 7000m in places, are not yet rounded by erosion and are still growing as the two underground giants continue to rumble against each other, making Ecuador geologically unstable and volatile. Earthquakes and tremors are common, and Ecuador also has a number of active volcanoes – Cotopaxi, at 5897m, is one of the world’s highest. Ten volcanoes exceed the snow line (4800m), and the summit of Chimborazo, at 6268m, actually surpasses Everest as the point furthest from the centre of the Earth by more than 2km, thanks to the planet’s bulge around the equator. Eruptions of active volcanoes cause occasional disruption.

Páramo

Below the snow line of the highest Andean peaks is a slender margin of tundra-like gelodifitia, where little else than mosses and lichens can survive the freezing nights and frigid soils. From around 4700m down to 3100m, the climate of the páramo is less harsh, allowing for a wider range of life. The vegetation of the páramo, covering ten percent of Ecuador’s total land area, is dominated by dense tussocks of Festuca or Calamgrostis grasses, along with terrestrial bromeliads and ferns. In the wetter páramo, pockets of Polylepis forest grow, one of the few trees that can survive at this altitude. Plants tend to have small thick leaves to resist the nightly frosts and waxy skins to reflect the intense ultraviolet radiation during cloudless spells. Páramo soil is sodden, and excess water collects in the hundreds of lakes that spangle the undulating scenery. The first signs of wildlife also emerge in the páramo with mammals such as the Andean spectacled bear and birds like the Andean condor.

Cloudforests

Lower than the páramo are the cloudforests, clothing the sierra in dense vegetation between 1800m and 3500m. Wet, green, vibrant and extraordinarily beautiful, cloudforests feel like the prehistoric habitat of dinosaurs. Streaked by silvery waterfalls, the forests are shrouded in heavy mists for at least part of each day. It’s this dampness that creates such lush conditions, giving rise to an abundance of epiphytes, such as lichens, mosses and ferns, which drape over the trees. Many orchids are epiphytes, preferring moss-covered branches or exposed bark to normal soil. With more than 3500 species, Ecuador is thought to have more orchids than any other country in the world.

  Cloudforests are also home to an incredible range of animals such as woolly tapirs, spectacled bears and pumas, and they have an exceptional level of bird endemism – species unique to a place and not found anywhere else. At higher altitudes, the cloudforest is called elfin forest because the trees are restricted in growth by the permanent mist that blocks out the sunlight. Elfin forests are an impenetrably dense tangle of short, twisted, gnarled trees barely two metres tall.

The Oriente

The Oriente represents Ecuador’s own piece of the Amazon rainforest, the largest tropical rainforest habitat in the world, with the greatest diversity of plants and animals on the planet – its unidentified varieties of beetles and insects alone are thought to outnumber all of Earth’s known animal species. One study has even found that a single hectare of Amazonian forest can contain up to 250 tree species, whereas in Europe and North America only ten different kinds of tree would occupy the same space. The rivers and their banks, too, are home to a fantastic array of animals, including nearly two thousand species of fish, plus freshwater dolphins, giant otters, anacondas, caymans and many unique birds. One reason for this extraordinary diversity is the Oriente’s climate – it never suffers from a lack of heat or water, with high levels of precipitation all year round, particularly from April to July.

Rainforest types

The different types of soil, terrain and rivers of the Amazon basin have allowed various kinds of rainforest to evolve. In the Oriente – and the Amazon as a whole – the majority comprises tierra firme rainforest, with well-drained, nutrient-rich soils. Trees typically have huge, flaring buttress roots, tall slender trunks and branches radiating out at the top. Most grow to 25–30m, although some, such as the ceiba or kapok, exceed 50m, with the forest canopy creating a dark, permanently shaded and enclosed space underneath.

  Because trees are often interconnected by vines, one falling tree can bring some of its neighbours down with it. Sunlight floods in, creating a different microclimate for the shadowy world under the canopy. Initially, fast-growing plants are favoured, and a dense tangle of competing shrubs, vines and spindly trees proliferates. Areas of disturbed forest, with an undeveloped canopy but dense ground cover and undergrowth, are known as secondary forest. Over time, it matures into fully developed primary forest, as the slower-growing trees out-compete and dwarf the pioneers and the canopy closes over, once again blocking sunlight from the forest floor, allowing only a sparse scattering of low-level plants.

  The Oriente also holds large areas of flooded forest around different river systems, providing important alternative habitats for plants and animals. Whitewater rivers flow down from the Andes carrying great amounts of suspended sediment, enriching the soil during floods. Over time, accumulated sediment on the riverbanks forms ridges, or levees, which help prevent regular flooding, meaning the plants that thrive here have to withstand years without a flood. These areas of intermittently flooded forest are known as várzea, characterized by a dense understorey (a low layer of vegetation), a middle layer of Cecropia and a high layer of trees reaching over 35m.

  Black-water rivers usually originate within the rainforest area itself, so contain very little suspended sediment, but do have a lot of decomposing organic matter. The result is an acidic, tannin-rich water that looks like strong black tea. The open floodplains around black-water rivers give rise to the haunting igapó forests. Igapó trees are relatively short and have adapted to floods, with roots that can survive underwater for long periods. Many trees here have developed a seed-dispersal strategy that relies on fish: their fruit falls into the water during floods, and their seeds germinate after having passed through the creature’s digestive system.

  The lush and palm-dominated moretal habitat occupies swampy and poorly drained areas near rivers and lakes, which often flood after localized rains. The most striking tree is a palm, Mauritia flexuosa, which grows to 30m, and the understorey is filled out with thick bursts of Scheleea brachyclada and Croton tessmannii among others.

Rainforest trees and plants

Rainforest trees usually have broad leaves that thin to a narrow point at the end to facilitate water run-off. Palm trees, a good example of this, are extremely common and are used by indigenous peoples to make thatch, ropes, weavings, hunting bows, fishing lines, hooks, utensils and musical instruments, as well as food and drink.

  Many trees are cauliflorous, so their flowers and fruits grow from the trunk, rather than the canopy branches, enabling terrestrial animals to access their fruits containing large seeds, a source of energy for monkeys, tapirs, rodents and peccaries. Other food simply falls to earth. Many palms, such as the coconut palm, produce large, hard fruits encasing the seeds. Meanwhile, in the canopy, birds such as curassows, toucans and parrots eat smaller fruits and seeds.

  Plants that don’t rely on animals and birds for reproduction have developed protective measures to counter the attentions of hungry animals. Some plants produce drugs, or defence compounds, and many tropical leaves are generously dosed with poisons such as curare, caffeine and cyanide. The monkey pot tree, for example, deters foragers by producing rotund “cannonball” fruits, each containing up to 50 long, thin seeds laced with toxic selenium. Other plants grow spines on their trunks to impale voracious caterpillars, while, less vindictively, the sap of the rubber tree congeals on exposure to air, so any insects that have gone to the trouble of chewing through the bark are only rewarded with an inedible goo.

  Epiphytes flourish on, around and over the vegetation, and sometimes the treetops are so laden with squatters seeking access to the sun that it’s hard to define the host under all its house guests. In the competitive world of the cloudforest, even epiphytes can have their own epiphytes. Many bromeliads’ leaves arrange themselves in overlapping rosettes, forming a bowl that catches and holds rainwater. Birds bathe in it, monkeys drink from it, and tree frogs, mosquitoes, flatworms, snails, salamanders and crabs can all complete their entire life cycle in these miniature aquatic habitats.

  Lianas (a woody vine that roots in the ground) dangle downwards from trees, elaborately draping and entwining around their trunks. Trunk-climbing vines start at the bottom of tree trunks and grow upwards, while strangler vines start at the top and grow down, encircling the tree and squeezing it tightly enough to choke it: the tree inside dies and decomposes, and the vine claims its place on the forest floor.

The coast

The western slopes of the Andes fall away to the coastal region, beginning with a large, fertile lowland river plain that extends for 150km to a range of hills, which rise up to 900m and form a ridge about 20km inland from the sea. The region has a very warm climate, with temperatures fluctuating between 25°C and 31°C (77–88°F) throughout the year.

The northern coastal region

The northern coastal region was once thickly forested and included within it the Chocó bioregion, an area of extraordinary biodiversity extending into Colombia. When the Andes were formed, the Chocó region in the west was cut off from the Amazon rainforests to the east. Since then, these highly humid western forests survived the Ice Age and followed an evolutionary path that diverged from that of their eastern counterparts, and it is thought that anywhere between one-fifth to a half of the nine thousand estimated plant and animal species here are endemic, such as the glorious scarlet-and-white tanager.

  Unfortunately, less than five percent of Ecuador’s Chocó forests have survived the twentieth century. Since the 1950s the destruction started apace with new roads leading to unplanned colonization and rapid deforestation. The region’s fertility has given it the dubious honour of being Ecuador’s most intensively farmed area, with banana, rice, cacao, coffee and sugar-cane plantations. The latest threat to the Chocó comes from oil-palm plantations, which have felled about 1000 square kilometres of native forest. Numerous animal species are in danger of extinction in the Chocó. Limited areas are protected, with the western part of the Ilinizas and Cotacachi-Cayapas the largest among them.

The southern coastal region

The southern coastal area forms part of the Tumbesian bioregion, which continues down into Peru. Originally, much of this distinctive landscape comprised dry tropical forests suited to the arid southern climate, but almost all of this habitat has now been cleared for agriculture, save a few pockets such as at the Parque Nacional Machalilla and the Bosque Protector Cerro Blanco. Trees and spiny shrubs grow in abundance, as do some otherwise disappearing native trees, such as balsam and tillo colorado, long coveted for their fine wood. Plants in the region have adapted to the desert-like environment, and many trees lose their leaves when water is scarce during the height of the dry season (July–Oct). Fewer birds live here than in the wet forests, but there are a significant number of range-restricted, endangered species endemic to this area, such as the grey-backed hawk and the ochre-bellied dove. Mammals include mantled howler monkeys, capuchins, ocelots and pumas.

  Long, empty beaches fringe about one-third of Ecuador’s 2000km of coastline, the rest comprising mangrove swamps, marshes, sandy cliffs, river deltas and estuaries. Mangrove trees, growing in shallow salt or brackish waters, are found especially along quiet shorelines and in estuaries. The mangroves build up rich organic soil in the knotted network of their roots and branches, supporting many other plants and wildlife. Frigatebirds, boobies and brown pelicans nest among the tangled branches and many types of fish, molluscs and crustaceans make homes in the protective shelter of the roots.

  Mangroves play an essential role in the ecology of coastal areas, but most of Ecuador’s mangrove treasury has been squandered, cut down to make way for the construction of profitable shrimp farms; only a few patches have been conserved. Around San Lorenzo near the Colombian border, the Reserva Ecológica Cayapas-Mataje harbours the tallest mangrove forest in the world as well as lovely coconut forests, teeming bird colonies and rare mammals such as the miniature tree sloth, while Manglares Churute, south of Guayaquil, is home to flamingos, pelicans and occasionally bottlenosed dolphins. Other nationally protected mangrove forests are at the estuary of the Río Muisne and Salado.

Wildlife

Few countries in the world come close to Ecuador for wildlife. Blessed with many thousands of colourful birds and animals crammed into a small area, Ecuador is a naturalist’s dream – birdwatchers alone can rack up a list of several hundred after only a few days in the forests. To top it all off, a good number of species are found nowhere else – making Ecuador one of the most biologically important countries on Earth.

Birds

Ecuador is home to just over 1600 different bird species, a sixth of the planet’s total. Because of its small size, the country also has the world’s highest diversity of birds – even though Brazil is thirty times larger, the two countries are home to about the same number of bird species.

Cotingas

The most famous cotinga is the fabulous Andean cock-of-the-rock, which inhabits lower to mid-montane cloudforest, where several dozen birds gather in leks (courtship display areas) to reproduce. The chunky males, with spectacular scarlet-orange plumage outlined by black wings and tail and a showy crescent of feathers running over their heads, preen and pose for the females. Relationships are brief, lasting for only one or two couplings, after which the male continues to strut his stuff in the search for more mates. The screaming piha is another cotinga that lives in the rainforest, but its mating appeals are auditory – its piercing call is one of the forest’s most distinctive sounds.

Eagles

The harpy eagle is one of the world’s largest, at over 1m in height, with sturdy, powerful legs as thick as human wrists and claws the size of human hands. Their wings and back are black and their faces and bellies are grey. Remarkably agile despite their size, harpy eagles twist and turn through the canopy, making swift strikes at monkeys and sloths, plucking them off trees with their legs. They tend not to soar, but crested eagles and three species of hawk-eagle are easier to see circling high over the rainforest canopy.

Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds’ names accurately reflect their beauty: garnet-throated, sparkling-tailed and velvet-breasted, to name but a few. Highly active, hummingbirds’ wings can buzz at eighty beats per second as they dart backwards, forwards and hover on the spot to sip nectar with their bills. They’re quite feisty and compete aggressively for flowers. Females flirt with dominant males and will mate with them even during the non-breeding season to gain access to the flowers in their territory. Hummingbird habitats range from the jungle to the páramo, with some species such as the sword-billed and the booted racquet-tail found in the cloudforests. Cloudforest lodges with hummingbird feeders are the best places to see them up close.

Oropendolas

Trees favoured by the crow-sized oropendolas can be spotted at a distance because they tend to be out in the open and have pendulous, basket-like nests. The birds pick isolated trees to avoid egg-stealing monkeys, which don’t like to traverse open ground. These birds come in two colour types – one displaying greenish hues, the other mostly black and russet, with yellow on the bill and tail. They are great singers, producing a wide range of sounds and songs.

Owls and potoos

The spectacled owl, one of Ecuador’s largest, is dark brown with a brown-yellow lower breast and belly and bright yellow eyes ringed by white. The black-and-white owl has a horizontally black-and-white striped breast and feeds almost exclusively on bats.

  The common potoo, another large nocturnal bird, is a visual challenge to detect in the daytime – it sits completely still in trees and, with its colouring and artful physical pose, looks exactly like the end of a branch.

Parrots and macaws

Most parrots are well camouflaged in the rainforest, but their banshee-like screeching makes them easy to locate. They usually mate for life, and it’s possible to pick out the pairs by watching a flock. They crack tough nuts and seeds using strong jaws, while the upper jaw also functions as an extra limb for climbing and manoeuvring.

  Macaws are the most spectacular members of the parrot family and their rainbow plumage, ranging from the magnificent scarlet macaw to the brilliant blue-and-yellow macaw, is easily seen even in the densest forest. About 30 percent of the South American parrots are at risk of extinction because of habitat loss and the highly profitable trade in exotic pets.

Tanagers

These small, gloriously colourful birds feed on fruit, nectar and insects and live in a variety of habitats, from lowland jungle to highland cloudforest. Montane species include the golden tanager, beryl-spangled tanager and blue-winged mountain-tanager. In the Amazon you can’t miss the flocks of exotic paradise tanagers with their neon-lime heads, purple throats, crimson lower backs, black upper backs and turquoise rumps.

Toucans

With their flamboyant oversized bills and colour-splashed bodies, toucans are easy to spot. The largest is the white-throated toucan, which has a black bill with a yellow stripe running down the middle, and baby-blue framed eyes. This species lives in the jungle along with araçaris, smaller, more colourful toucans. The highlands are where to find the wonderful mountain toucans.

Vultures and condors

Vultures thrive everywhere that other animals die, as they eat only carrion. Black vultures are common around urban rubbish dumps, while the greater yellow-headed vulture dominates the rainforest niche.

  The Andean condor, Ecuador’s national bird, is the world’s heaviest bird of prey, with a wingspan of 3m. Adults are black with a ruff-like white collar and bald pinkish head. Hunting has reduced their population to a maximum of around a hundred individuals. They live near and above the tree line, with the largest number soaring over the páramo around Volcán Antisana in the northeast.

Mammals

Ecuador is home to 317 species of mammals, about eight percent of the world’s total. Many live in the forests and are shy of human presence, making them difficult to spot, though most jungle trips are rewarded with sightings of monkeys skipping through the canopy. The holy grail of the mountain forests is the Andean spectacled bear, but few visitors are lucky enough to see one.

  In 2013 the olinguito, a fluffy coati-like creature, was ‘discovered’ in the Tandayapa Valley – the first new carnivorous mammal to be identified in South America for 35 years.

Anteaters

Giant anteaters can weigh up to 40kg and amble along the rainforest floor looking for ant nests; when they find one, they poke their long tongues inside and trap the ants with gluey saliva. The other three species, including the tiny pygmy anteater, live in trees, where they live on ants, bees and termites.

Bats

Tent-building bats live in the rainforest and create homes by selecting a large leaf and nibbling a line down each side so that the leaf flaps droop downwards. Small groups can be seen huddling together in a close-knit scrum underneath their protective tent.

  The common vampire bat lives in the rainforest and subtropical forests of the Andean slopes up to 1500m, feeding entirely on the blood of mammals. They bite with sharp incisors, rarely waking their victims, and lick up the drops of blood dripping from the wound – vampire-bat saliva contains special anticoagulants so that the blood flows freely. There are very few cases of bats feeding on humans.

Wild cats

Felines aren’t easy to find, but they do scratch logs to proclaim their presence, so look for telltale marks, as well as paw prints and faeces.

  Ocelots are mid-sized cats, with tawny fur and black spots, stripes and rosettes, and live in a range of habitats with good cover, from rainforest to desert scrub, sometimes raiding chicken coops in villages. Pale-grey or yellow pumas also live in dry areas, while those in the rainforest are yellow-brown to dark red-brown. Jaguars are tawny yellow with black spots. They’ve adapted to a range of habitats, hunting at any time of day for capybaras, deer, turtles, caymans, birds or fish.

  Wildcat attacks on humans are very rare. If you meet a jaguar or a puma, don’t run: stay facing it, make a lot of noise and wave your arms about.

Dolphins and manatees

Pink river dolphins, or botos, hunt for fish, turtles and crabs. Although nearly blind, they navigate and locate prey using a sonar system housed in a large bulge on their foreheads. Curious and intelligent, they’ll approach swimmers but won’t attack.

  Amazonian manatees are highly endangered due to hunting. These large, hairless, cigar-shaped herbivores are docile, browsing on aquatic plants and living under the water, only breaking the surface with their nostrils to breathe.

Monkeys

Ecuadorian monkeys live in trees and only hit the ground running to cross open space. Marmosets and tamarins are the smallest of them and sport flamboyant facial hair, ear tufts, tassels, ruffs, manes and moustaches. They communicate with chirps and bird-like whistles, and can be seen in villages and towns.

  Howler monkeys are more often heard than seen. At dawn and dusk they band together for deafening howling sessions which carry across the canopy for kilometres. A male usually starts off with an escalating grunting session, which segues into long, deep roars. Females join in with their higher-pitched voices. Red howlers favour tall riverbank trees, so they’re most easily spotted from a boat.

Otters

There are two otters in Ecuador, the neotropical river otter and the giant otter, which can grow up to 1.5m in length, not counting its metre-long tail. They have sleek reddish-brown coats, huge, fully webbed feet and intelligent, canine-type faces (their local name is lobo del río, or river wolf).

Rodents

Rats and mice thrive in urban environments, squirrels leap acrobatically through the trees and porcupines root around on the rainforest floor. The capybara is the world’s largest rodent, weighing some 55kg, and has a stocky body and thin hind legs – they often sit on their haunches like dogs. Small herds live along Amazonian lakes, rivers and swamps, feeding on water lilies, water hyacinth, leaves and sedges.

Sloths

Sloths live in the rainforest and feed on canopy leaves, digesting them in a multi-chambered stomach. Algae flourishes in tiny grooves on their body hair, turning them an alien green and camouflaging them in the trees. They’re hard to see from the ground, but eagles are masters at swooping in to pick them off the branches. Once a month, sloths climb down from their trees and dig a hole in the ground in which to defecate.

Spectacled bears

Ecuador’s only bear lives in forested mountain habitats from 1000m to 4000m. They’re mostly black or brown, mottled white or cream with distinctive “spectacles” encircling part of each eye. By bear standards they’re small – the males weigh about 80kg and the females 60kg. Each paw is equipped with powerful claws for climbing or tearing apart trees. Up in the trees they build platforms of branches, on which they rest or feed on fruits and honey.

Tapirs

Tapirs, the region’s largest terrestrial mammals, have stocky bodies, muscular necks, elongated, overhanging upper lips and short tails, and spend about ninety percent of the day eating a calorie-poor leaf diet. Their droopy upper lips are used to reach out and sweep food into their mouths.

  The Brazilian tapir, the size of a Shetland pony, varies in colour from black to red to tan. They hang out in swamps in the rainforest and in grassy habitats up to 2000m, and if afraid leap into the nearest water and swim away – though if you can imitate their loud whistle, they will answer you. The extremely rare brown, shaggy mountain tapir lives in the montane forests and páramo.

Reptiles and amphibians

There are about eight hundred reptile and amphibian species living in Ecuador. They thrive in the Amazon and also in the Andean foothills, where many are endemic.

Caymans

Crocodilian caymans lie motionless along riverbanks waiting for fish and other water-dwelling animals, such as capybaras, snakes and birds, to come within striking distance of their powerful jaws. The best way to see them is from a boat at night. Hold a torch at eye level and scan the riverbank; the caymans are easy to find because their eyes shine red in the beam.

Frogs

Frogs thrive in the Amazon where the hot, damp conditions keep them warm and hydrated. Over 75 percent are nocturnal and a deafening chorus wafts each night from ponds, lakes, riverbanks and the depths of flooded forests, as the males compete to attract females with their throaty tones.

  The leaf dweller, which looks just like a dead leaf, is fairly common but only visible when on the move. Fast-flowing streams are where to look for glass frogs, which are completely transparent, revealing their tiny beating hearts and other organs under the skin. The poison-dart frog is small, brightly coloured and only active in the day.

Lizards and geckos

Many lizards and geckos live in the Amazon, such as the common iguana, which, with its heavily scaled head and spiny back, looks like a miniature dinosaur. The basilisk, or Jesus lizard, can be seen scurrying across still rivers, but it isn’t really walking on water – the hind feet are just under the water’s surface and are sprung upwards and onwards by an air bubble trapped beneath its webbed feet.

Snakes

Plenty of snakes, both harmless and poisonous, slither through Ecuador’s forests, but they are encountered only rarely. Pit vipers locate prey with heat receptors between their eyes and nostrils that can register changes in temperature of only 0.003°C. The teeth usually lie back horizontally but are erected to strike, bite and inject venom. Tan-coloured with dark diamond patterning, the two-metre-long, highly venomous fer-de-lance is the most notorious viper, an aggressive snake with a very painful bite that can kill. The bushmaster is the world’s largest viper at up to 3m in length.

  The boa constrictor, which can reach 4m in length, is found in a variety of habitats from wet lowland forest to arid grassland. Another constrictor, the anaconda, is the largest snake in the world, occasionally growing to over 8m and weighing in at more than 200kg. Highly intelligent, it lies in wait by rivers for unsuspecting capybaras, tapirs, large birds and peccaries, watching their drinking habits for weeks at a time before striking.

Turtles

Aquatic side-necked turtles are frequently seen in the rainforest, sunning themselves on branches sticking out of the water. When defending themselves, they tuck their heads sideways into their shells. Turtles build nests of rotting debris, which incubate their eggs at a constant temperature.

Insects

In Ecuador there are at least a million different types of insect, and the rainforest is the best place to find them. At nightfall, they produce the unmistakeable rainforest soundscape – a cacophony of cheeps, clicks, trills, screeches and wheezes.

Ants

Many rainforest ants make their homes on plants, which provide shelter, protection and food via nectar. Acacia ants, for example, pay for their board on the acacia tree by defending it from unwelcome visitors and will attack beetles, caterpillars and other ants that try to land or climb on it. They also prune back other plants that grow too close or shadow their tree from the sunlight.

  Army ant colony members can number over a million. Squadrons run eight to ten abreast along forest trails and cooperate to overpower other invertebrate creatures far larger than themselves. Leaf-cutter ants are highly visible as they move in lengthy columns bearing relatively huge leaf clippings. The leaves are transported back to their vast underground nests, but instead of consuming them the ants chew them into a soft pulp to make compost on which to grow a special fungus – their favourite food.

  Avoid the conga or giant hunting ant, a large, aggressive-looking black creature whose sharp sting can cause pain and fever, lasting from a few hours to a few days.

Beetles

One of the most common beetles is the giant ceiba borer, its outer skeleton gleaming like iridescent metal. Hercules, rhinoceros and elephant beetles are hard to miss, as they’re the little giants their names suggest. The headlight beetle of the bioluminescent pyrophorus genus is also easily spotted: two round, light-producing organs behind its head give it the appearance of a toy car. The beautiful tortoise beetle looks as though it’s been dipped in liquid gold.

Butterflies

Ecuador is home to around 4500 species of butterfly. The most striking are the morphos, huge tropical visions in electric blue. Their brilliant colour derives from the way light is reflected and refracted by their complex wing scales. Owl butterflies have owl-like eyespots on their wings to direct hungry birds away from crucial body parts. Clearwings look like tiny fairies; with transparent wings, they’re hard to see when motionless. White-and-sulphur butterflies are highly visible from rainforest rivers. Droves gather on riverbanks to lick nutrients from the ground.

Fish

Ecuador has more than eight hundred species of freshwater fish, with an incredible diversity in rainforest rivers. The pirarucu, one of the world’s largest freshwater fish, lives here – the real giants have all been fished out, but specimens of up to 2m are still caught. Watch for leaf fishes which are hard to discern from dead leaves on account of their crumpled, blotchy appearance and lower jaw, which mimics a stem.

  Forty percent of the fish are either catfish or characins. Many characins are fruit-eaters and wait for fruit to fall from trees in the flooded forests. The notorious red piranha is also a characin. Small but ferocious, they are only a danger to human swimmers in large groups when water levels are low and food supplies poor. Far more dangerous is the electric eel, which grows up to 1.8m and can produce a jolt of 650 volts.

  The catfish to watch out for is the tiny candiru, which usually parasitizes other fish, but is also thought to follow urine currents of human swimmers, entering the urethra on occasion. Once inside, it lodges itself securely with an array of sharp spines and causes unmentionable discomfort. The offending fish is so firmly wedged it has to be surgically removed.

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THE GALÁPAGOS: GEOGRAPHY AND WILDLIFE

The thirteen large islands and over forty small islands, islets and rocks making up the Galápagos Archipelago cluster around the equator 960km west of mainland Ecuador. The total land area of the archipelago is 7882 square kilometres; Isabela, the largest island, takes up well over half of this.

The origins of the archipelago

The archipelago is volcanic in origin, and remains one of the most volatile such regions on the planet; the most recent eruption was on Fernandina in 2009. Unlike most of the world’s volcanic areas, the islands don’t lie on the borders of two tectonic plates, a fact that has puzzled scientists. The hot spot theory, in which a fixed area of extraordinary heat in the magma occasionally bubbles up to form a volcano, offers the most plausible explanation. The archipelago sits on the Nazca plate, which is moving eastwards and downwards to South America at a rate of 3.4cm a year: as the plate shifts, the volcano comes off the hot spot, becomes extinct and is eventually eroded by the elements and submerged beneath the sea. Meanwhile, new volcanoes appear over the hot spot. This would explain why the most easterly islands are the oldest and most weathered; San Cristóbal is thought to be between 2.3 and 6.3 million years old. In the west, Isabela and Fernandina are thought to have been created less than 700,000 years ago and are the most volcanically active. Two chains of extinct and eroded underwater mountains and volcanoes – the Cocos and Carnegie ridges – are evidence the hot spot has been working for millions of years.

VOLCANIC FORMATIONS

The beautiful volcanic formations on the Galápagos Islands are often quite different from those found on the mainland. This is due to basaltic lava which, rather than producing high cones such as Cotopaxi, makes shield-shaped volcanoes. The broad tops of these can collapse into empty magma chambers below, leaving enormous calderas, huge depressions many times the size of the original vents, or craters, circular basins rimmed by lava walls at the volcano’s summit; Volcán Sierra Negra on Isabela has a crater 10km across, one of the world’s largest. Like steam vents on the volcanoes, sulphur-encrusted fumaroles send puffs of gas into the air.

  Much of the Galápagos landmass consists of lava flows, and you’ll find two particularly interesting types on several islands. Pahoehoe lava, from the Hawaiian word meaning “ropey”, describes the rippled effect caused when molten lava in contact with the air begins to solidify, but is then ruffled up by molten lava passing beneath it into tongue or rope-like shapes. Aa lava, named after the Hawaiian for “hurt”, occurs when the surface of the lava flow buckles, breaks and then gets bulldozed by the continuing movement of the flow, resulting in layers of small, sharp rocks. If a lava flow hardens on the outside, and then the strength of the flow decreases, lava tubes are sometimes formed; there are several large enough to walk down on Santa Cruz.

  Cones of various sizes and types frequently appear on the islands: hornitos (less than 1m high), resemble burst pimples solidified on a lava bed; the larger spatter cones give Bartolomé its spectacular lunar landscape; and the impressive tuff cones are often made up of stripy layers of rock-hard compacted ash. The uplift at Urbina Bay, on Isabela, is one of the more startling products of volcanic activity. In 1954, a 5km stretch of reef was shunted 4m into the air by movements of magma beneath the crust, leaving its marine inhabitants drying in the sun. Islands including Plazas, Baltra and Seymour Norte are entirely the result of uplifts.

Wildlife

In contrast to the diversity of life found on the mainland, few species have managed to make the 960km journey to the Galápagos. But it’s the islands’ small number of species in isolation that has fascinated generations of scientists. Like a self-contained puzzle, life on the Galápagos can be unravelled in a way impossible for the tangled mass of mainland biological relationships. Our Galápagos wildlife field guide has further detailed information on the animals, birds and reptiles that you are likely to see on the archipelago.

The origins of Galápagos life

The Galápagos Islands came into being as barren, lifeless heaps of lava cut off from the rest of the world by vast expanses of ocean. It’s thought that the first life to make the crossing were seeds and spores of mosses, lichens and ferns, blown from the continent on the prevailing winds and deposited on the islands through rainfall. Insects, snails and spiders could also have been carried thousands of kilometres in the air, and when the winds were fierce enough they may also have blown land birds, as well as bats to the archipelago. Many of the sea birds routinely fly long distances and need no vegetation for nests, making them likely candidates for early pioneers. As the unforgiving lava broke down into soil patches, a larger number of plants would have been able to colonize the island, in turn supporting more animals. It’s thought that up to sixty percent of plant species were brought to the islands by birds, either as undigested seeds in guano, or regurgitated, or attached to their feet and feathers.

  The last route was by the sea – several currents converge on the islands, and may have brought species from the Pacific, Central and South American coasts. Swept up in the flow, marine turtles, penguins, seals and sea lions could all have swum to the islands, while giant tortoises – not natural swimmers – are buoyant and can survive for long periods without food or water. The only satisfactory explanation for the arrival of other reptiles and rice rats (the only native land mammal) is on tree trunks and logs, or on floating rafts made of matted vegetation set adrift after storms. Such a journey would have taken a couple of weeks, too long for most mammals and amphibians to survive without fresh water, but well within the capabilities of reptiles such as iguanas.

  The arrival of humans in the Galápagos provided a new means for foreign species to colonize the islands, and those, such as dogs, rats, ants and goats, as well as plants like blackberry, red quinine and elephant grass, now pose one of the greatest threats to the delicate ecology of the islands (see Conservation in the Galápagos).

  Separated from the rest of their kind, the marooned denizens of the Galápagos evolved as they adapted to their new environment, often ending up as quite different species from their mainland counterparts. These new plants and animals, found nowhere else in the world, are termed endemic species. Sometimes a single common ancestor has brought about a number of new species – as with Darwin’s finches, a process known as speciation. In the Galápagos, though, the story doesn’t end there: not only is the archipelago far from the continent, but the islands and islets comprising it are distant enough from each other to bring about their own endemic species. In a few instances, even the isolated habitats within an island can provoke speciation: for example, the five main volcanoes of Isabela are each populated by their own subspecies of giant tortoise.

  Many Galápagos animals have evolved without the threat of predators, which accounts for their unusual fearlessness.

Birds

The Galápagos Islands are an incomparable treat for birdwatchers. Despite a relatively small number of bird species for the tropics (there are sixty types of resident birds, and another 81 migratory species visit the islands), about half of the residents are endemic, and visitors are often able to get within a metre of many of them. The naturalist William Beebe, who made two expeditions to the islands in the 1920s, tells of frantically searching for a flycatcher with his camera, only to find it perched on the lens “pecking at the brass fittings”.

  Sea birds make the most of good fish stocks in the cool-dry season, and migrants are in evidence from around October to February. Most land birds breed in the rainy season, when food is more abundant.

Sea birds

Since most sea birds are naturally strong long-distance fliers that thrive in island environments, only six out of the 19 resident species are endemic. Sea birds are also among the most prevalent of Galápagos fauna, numbering almost a million. Some of the best-known species are boobies, flightless cormorants, frigatebirds, Galápagos penguins, gulls and waved albatrosses. Other residents of the archipelago include the graceful red-billed tropicbird, the widespread brown pelican, the brown noddy and sooty tern, the Galápagos petrel, Audubon’s shearwater and three species of storm petrel.

Shore and wetland birds

Rock pools, mangroves, beaches and shallow salty lagoons are common features of the Galápagos coast, providing habitats for as many as fifty bird species, many of them migrants such as the wandering tattler, which commutes from the Arctic. Only one shore bird is endemic, the lava heron, though several residents have shown enough of the slow signs of evolution to have earned endemic subspecies status, such as the yellow-crowned night heron. Striated herons and great blue herons are the other resident heron species frequently seen around the coastal waters, gazing into pools with beady eyes. American flamingos tiptoe about the saltwater lagoons, sifting the silt and surface for water boatmen and shrimp. During the breeding season, care must be taken not to disturb these elegant birds, as they may abandon nests if startled. There are fewer than 250 pairs in the Galápagos.

  As well as resident waders such as the American oystercatcher and black-necked stilt, a number of familiar migrants are in evidence, including turnstones, sandpipers, yellowlegs, sanderlings, whimbrels, phalaropes and plovers. The white-cheeked pintail duck is equally at home by the coast or at the freshwater lagoons in the highlands, where the purple or common gallinule (moorhen) make their home. Cattle egrets, nesting in the mangroves, are more usually seen in the highlands in large flocks near livestock. This striking white bird has now managed to colonize much of the world, though it was found only in West Africa till the late nineteenth century.

Land birds

The land birds of the Galápagos have been of enormous interest to scientists ever since Darwin’s discoveries. Unlike most strong-winged sea birds, which are accustomed to making long journeys, the land birds can only have been brought to the archipelago blown on the winds of freak storms. And yet, of the 29 resident species, a phenomenal 22 are endemic, so such abnormal bird-carrying gales must have occurred no less than fourteen times – quite a feat considering that none strong enough to achieve this has yet been recorded.

  Most famous of the Galápagos birds are Darwin’s finches, the fifteen endemic and subtly different finches that proved to be of enormous importance to their namesake. These dowdy, sparrow-sized birds can be difficult to tell apart, despite the all-important differences in beak size and feeding habits. Since the finches are so similar, more like each other than any other kind of finch, Darwin suspected that they were all descendants of a common ancestor. No doubt the archipelago’s grouping of isolated islands allowed for this remarkable speciation, even though many of them now inhabit the same islands.

  The large ground finch has the biggest beak and is able to crack open large, hard seeds, while the warbler finch probes plants and flowers with its sharp and slender bill and has been called “more warbler than finch”. The woodpecker finch and critically endangered mangrove finch are celebrated for their ability to use tools, often fashioning a twig or a cactus spine to wheedle larvae and grubs from tight spots. On remote Wolf and Darwin islands, the vampire finch is named for its pecking at the backs of Nazca boobies and feeding off their blood. The small ground finch has better interspecies relations, preening tortoises and iguanas for parasites.

  The archipelago has four endemic mockingbirds: the Galápagos mockingbird is fairly widespread, while the Chatham mockingbird only inhabits San Cristóbal, the Hood mockingbird Española, and the rare Charles mockingbird a couple of islets around Floreana. They are confident and inquisitive birds, with no qualms about hopping around the feet of large groups of tourists.

  Galápagos hawks are almost as fearless, having no natural enemies, and are content to let humans get to within a few metres of them. The Galápagos hawk practises a breeding system whereby the female has as many as four mates, who help her incubate the eggs and tend to the young. With the hawk, the Galápagos barn owl and the short-eared owl make up the archipelago’s birds of prey. The last is the more commonly seen, particularly on Genovesa, where it swoops on the young of the large sea-bird colonies. Other endemics include the elegant Galápagos dove, the secretive and miniature Galápagos rail, the Galápagos flycatcher and the Galápagos martin, the archipelago’s only non-migratory member of the swallow family.

  For all their intrinsic interest, the endemics can be a drab bunch, and indeed, the archipelago’s two most colourful birds are residents. The yellow warbler and the dazzling male vermilion flycatcher, boasting a smart red-and-black plumage, are common favourites brightening up the dour scenery.

Reptiles

Above all fauna on the Galápagos, it’s the reptiles that give the islands their prehistoric flavour. Although their appearance is antediluvian, the Galápagos reptiles have undergone the same evolutionary processes as the islands’ other creatures, resulting in a high level of endemism. Of the 23 reptile species, 21 are unique to the Galápagos and several of these are specific to particular islands. Five reptile families are represented on the archipelago: tortoises, marine turtles, iguanas (including lizards), geckos and snakes.

  Being ectothermic animals, reptiles cannot regulate their body temperature through physiology, such as sweating or dilating and constricting blood vessels as humans do. They need to heat their blood up to a certain level before they can become properly active – which is why you’ll commonly see iguanas splayed on rocks absorbing the sun’s rays for many hours, only moving into the shade if they get too hot. This system also allows them to survive on less food and water than other animals.

Mammals

The travails of making the crossing from the continent have proved too much for most mammals, and there is a noticeable absence of them on the islands. Just six native species inhabit the Galápagos, and of them only the rice rats made the gruelling sea journey on a vegetation raft (like many of the reptiles, which are far better suited to this kind of transport). Four of the seven rice-rat species are now extinct, wiped out by the introduced black rat, which out-competes them. The remaining three species are found on Santa Fé and Fernandina islands, islands that have so far been spared invasion by the black rat.

  The bats took the air route: the ancestors of the endemic Lasiurus brachyotis were most likely blown over from the mainland like land birds, while the other native species, the hoary bat, is a known migrant and widespread throughout North America. There’s nothing to stop mammal populations flourishing once they get to the Galápagos, as has been demonstrated by a number of introduced species, such as feral goats, cats, dogs and rats, which have been doing terrible damage to native wildlife, all brought to the islands by another late and supremely harmful mammalian arrival, Homo sapiens.

Fish and marine invertebrates

Bathed in cold upwelling currents and warm tropical waters, the Galápagos harbours 306 fish species, with 51 endemics. Plenty of interesting fish can be spotted with a snorkel and mask, but the most thrilling to swim with are the sharks. Regularly seen species include white-tip reef sharks, hammerheads and black-tip sharks, none of which is usually dangerous to humans. You’ll generally need to scuba dive to see the Galápagos shark, which prefers deeper waters. There have been very few reports of shark attacks in the Galápagos, certainly none fatal, but follow the advice of your guide all the same. The colossal 18m whale shark is the world’s largest fish and feeds on plankton.

  The rays include the stingray, the golden ray, the beautiful spotted eagle ray and the manta ray (which can grow up to 6m across). The larger rays are frequently seen flipping out of the water before landing in clouds of spray. Among the more commonly seen bony fishes are the blue-eyed damselfish, the stripy sergeant major, the Moorish idol, the hieroglyphic hawkfish and the white-banded angelfish, as well as several blennies, wrasses and parrotfish. The four-eyed blenny is so called because each eye has two facets, allowing it to see both in and out of the water. It can spend two hours flapping about the rocks as it hunts for insects and small crabs.

  Octopuses lurk in rock pools, but can be difficult to see because of their ability to change colour. Among the most visible intertidal animals are the more than one hundred crab species. The brightest is the Sally Lightfoot crab, whose red casing gleams against the black lava. Its name comes either from a Jamaican dancer or its ability to zip over a tide pool. Young Sally Lightfoots are dark in order to blend in with the background. Ghost crabs live in holes dug in sandy beaches, while the soft-bodied hermit crab occupies abandoned shells, moving as it grows. Fiddler crabs are easy to identify by their outsized claw. Sea urchins, sea cucumbers, starfish, anemones, molluscs and sponges can also be found.

Land invertebrates

There are more than two thousand species of land invertebrates – animals without a backbone, such as insects and spiders – in the Galápagos, over half of them endemic. It sounds a huge number, but compared with more than a million species found in mainland Ecuador, it’s clear that land invertebrates found the archipelago difficult to colonize.

  The arid climate has meant that many insects are nocturnal, escaping the noonday heat in dank and shaded hideouts. For this reason many are drably coloured. Beetles account for more than four hundred species, bugs eighty or so and flies around a hundred, including the bothersome horsefly and midge. The carpenter bee is the only bee, an important pollinator of native plants. Of the butterflies and moths, the yellow Galápagos sulphur butterfly and the green hawkmoth, which has a proboscis twice the length of its body, are among the most commonly seen of the two groups. The Galápagos silver fritillary has sparkling silvery patches on its wings, but perhaps the most colourful insect outside the eight butterfly species is the painted locust, frequently spotted around the coast in black, red and yellow. There are two scorpions, both of which can sting but are not dangerous, and more than fifty spiders, including a venomous relative of the black widow and the silver argiope, which weaves a silky “X” into the centre of its web. A 30cm, crimson-legged centipede, the poisonous endemic Scolopendra galapagensis, has a very painful bite, normally reserved for unlucky insects, lava lizards and small birds.

  Ticks and mites annoy reptiles rather than humans, and tortoises and iguanas rely on finches to remove them. Of the tiny land snails, the Bulimulus genus has enjoyed extraordinary speciation with more than sixty known endemics descended from a single ancestor – putting Darwin’s finches quite in the shade.

Plants

There are more than six hundred plant species in the Galápagos, around forty percent of which are endemic. Botanists have divided the islands into vegetation zones, each of which contains certain groupings of plants. Levels of rainfall play an important part in determining these zones and, generally speaking, the higher the altitude, the more moisture is received, allowing for a greater number of plant species. Usually the southern, windward side of an island receives far more rain than the leeward, so in many cases the zones differ from one side to another.

Coastal and arid zones

Going by altitude, the first zone is the coastal or littoral zone around the shore, dominated by salt-tolerant plants, the most notable of which are four species of mangrove (red, black, white and button), which make important breeding sites for many sea and shore birds. When water is scarce, sea purslane (Sesuvium) turns a deep red, covering shorelines in a crimson carpet, reverting to green in the wet season. Beach morning glory is a creeper that helps bind sand dunes together and produces large lilac flowers.

  The arid zone is one of the largest zones, and is the most familiar to island visitors for its scrubby and cactus-filled semi-desert landscape. The candelabra cactus (Jasminocereus), whose distinctive barrel-shaped fingers can grow to 7m, and the lava cactus (Brachycereus), growing in small yellow clumps on black lava flows, are both endemic. The widespread prickly pear cactus (Opuntia) comes in fourteen endemic types on the islands and forms a major food staple for many birds and reptiles. The most striking of them has developed into tall, broad-trunked trees up to 12m in height, in part an evolutionary response to browsing tortoises. The lower shrubby forms are mostly found on tortoise-free islands, and in the northern islands, where pollinating insects are absent, the spines are softer to allow birds to do the job.

  The ubiquitous tree of this zone is the palo santo, recognizable for its deathly grey appearance. Its name translates as “holy stick”, both because its fragrant resin is burnt as incense in churches (it can also be used as an insect repellent) and because its off-white flowers appear around Christmas. When the rains come, green leaves start sprouting on its branches. Virtually waterless ashy or sandy soils support the low-lying grey Tiquilia, as seen scattered around the dry slopes of Bartolomé. The genes of the Galápagos tomato, one of the world’s only two tomato species, whose seeds germinate best having passed through the giant tortoise’s digestive system, have been used to develop drought-resistant tomatoes in other countries. Lichens are also common in the arid zone, requiring very little moisture or soil, and grow on trees, rocks and even tortoise shells.

Transition and highland zones

The transition zone links the dry zone to the more humid areas of highland zones. It’s dominated by pega pega (meaning “stick stick”), so called for its sticky leaves and fruit; guayabillo, an endemic that produces fruits similar to the guava; and matazarno, a tall tree used for timber.

  The humid area starts at around 200m and is divided into four zones. The scalesia zone is lush and densely forested, perpetually soaked in garúa mist during the cool-dry season. It’s dominated by lechoso (Scalesia pedunculata), a 15m-tall tree with a bushy leafy top which is among the tallest members of the daisy and sunflower families, most often seen by visitors in the highlands of Santa Cruz. From one ancestor the Scalesia genus has developed into twenty forms according to the various environmental nuances of the islands. As in a cloudforest, the trees are covered with epiphytes, mainly mosses, liverworts and ferns, but also a few orchids, and one bromeliad (Tillandsia). At the higher end of this zone, the smaller cat’s claw tree begins to take over; it is also hung heavy with epiphytes, which appear brown in the dry season, so giving this level the name the brown zone.

  On Santa Cruz and San Cristóbal islands, the miconia zone is made up of a belt of cacaotillo (Miconia robinsoniana), an endemic shrub growing to about 5m, producing dark blue berries and resembling the cacao. Beginning at about 700m, the pampa zone is the highest and wettest zone, made up of grasses, sedges and other plants adapted to boggy environments. The tree fern, reaching a height of 3m, is the tallest plant in this zone.

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BOOKS

With the possible exception of the Galápagos Islands, foreign writers have paid less attention to Ecuador than to its South American neighbours, and few Ecuadorian works are translated into English. That said, there’s a reasonable choice of books available in English, though not all are easy to find. Those books marked (o/p) are out of print, and those marked with   are particularly recommended.

ART AND POPULAR CULTURE

 Dawn Ades Art in Latin America: The Modern Era 1820–1980. Excellent and lavishly illustrated general history of Latin American art from Independence, with discussions of a number of Ecuadorian artists.

Christy Buchanan and Cesar Franco The Ecuador Cookbook: Traditional Vegetarian and Seafood Recipes. A bilingual cookbook with delightfully illustrated and easy-to-follow vegetarian and seafood recipes.

Thomas Cummins Ecuador: The Secret Art of Pre-Columbian Ecuador. Fantastic illustrations of Ecuador’s greatest and most unusual pre-Columbian artwork, plus essays from expert archeologists.

Gabrielle Palmer Sculpture in the Kingdom of Quito. Meticulously and thoughtfully researched study of the development of colonial sculpture in Quito, illustrated by some gorgeous photographs.

FICTION

 Demetrio Aguilera-Malta Don Goyo. A spellbinding novel, first published in 1933, dealing with the lives of a group of cholos who eke out a living by fishing from the mangrove swamps in the Gulf of Guayaquil, which are in danger of being cleared by white landowners.

Kelly Aitken Love in a Warm Climate. Collection of short stories by a Canadian writer, all set in Ecuador and told by a series of North American female narrators.

Susan Benner and Kathy Leonard (ed) Fire from the Andes. The eight Ecuadorian stories in this anthology of contemporary Andean women writers touch on themes such as patriarchy, racial prejudice, poverty and ageing.

William Burroughs Queer. Autobiographical, Beat-generation novel about a morphine addict’s travels through Ecuador in an abortive search for yagé, a hallucinatory drug from the Oriente.

Jorge Icaza Huasipungo (The Villagers). Iconic indígenista novel written in 1934, portraying the hardships and degradation suffered by the Andean indígena in a world dominated by exploitive landowners.

Benjamin Kunkel Indecision. Enjoyable coming-of-age novel about a 20-something trying to find direction in his life, who travels to Ecuador to see an old high-school crush.

Adalberto Ortiz Juyungo. A 1940s novel set in the tropical lowlands, about the life of a black labourer who kills two white men in self-defence. An atmospheric read, full of evocative detail.

Luis Sepúlveda The Old Man Who Read Love Stories. Captivating and deceptively simple story of an itinerant dentist’s twice-yearly voyages into a Shuar community in the Oriente – vividly evoking the sensations of travelling in the rainforest, while raising environmental questions.

Kurt Vonnegut Galápagos. A darkly comic novel which, turning natural selection on its head, has a handful of passengers on a Galápagos cruise ship marooned on the islands as the only survivors of a war and global pandemic.

GALÁPAGOS

Johanna Angermeyer My Father’s Island. The author uncovers the hidden past of her relatives through lyrical reminiscences on the Angermeyer family’s struggle to settle on Santa Cruz, Galápagos.

Carol Ann Bassett Galápagos at the Crossroads. Provocative book dissecting the colliding forces that threaten to destroy what is special about the islands.

William Beebe Galápagos: World’s End. This book brought the Galápagos to the attention of a new generation of travellers in the 1920s, and its popularity sparked a number of ill-fated attempts to colonize the islands. Beebe, director of the New York Zoological Society, went to the Galápagos as head of a two-and-a-half-month scientific expedition, but problems meant that he spent only “six thousand minutes” there.

Isabel Castro and Antonia Phillips A Guide to the Birds of the Galápagos Islands. Comprehensive bird guide with colour illustrations and detailed descriptions to help identification.

Charles Darwin Voyage of the Beagle. A hugely enjoyable book with a chapter devoted to the Galápagos; original insights and flashes of genius pepper Darwin’s wonderfully vivid descriptions of the islands’ landscapes and wildlife.

Adrian Desmond and James Moore Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist. The enormous, definitive and best-selling biography of Darwin, so thorough and wide-ranging that it also serves as a compelling study of Victorian Britain as a whole.

Julian Fitter, Daniel Fitter and David Hosking Wildlife of the Galápagos. A great, portable wildlife guide with photos of more than 250 Galápagos species accompanied by succinct and informative text, plus coverage of history, climate, geography and conservation too.

 John Hickman The Enchanted Islands. A succinct, well-researched and entertaining history of human life on the islands, especially strong on the many episodes concerning pirates and castaways.

Michael H. Jackson Galápagos: A Natural History. The most complete guide to the natural history of the Galápagos, containing a broad and readable overview of geography, geology, flora and fauna, and conservation.

Henry Nicholls Lonesome George. Everything you wanted to know about the world’s most famous tortoise in a spirited and entertaining biography. Nicholls has also penned the well-written The Galápagos: A Natural History adding the trials and triumphs of human settlement to the well-organized presentation of land, sea and wildlife of the archipelago.

Dore Strauch Satan Came to Eden. The other first-hand account of the torrid and violent Galápagos affair on Floreana, remote even for the Galápagos. This book became the basis of the eponymous crime thriller meets Darwin documentary released in 2013.

 Andy Swash and Robert Still Birds, Mammals and Reptiles of the Galápagos Islands. Excellent compact field guide with colour photos and sketches, including a fin guide to aid the identification of dolphins and whales.

Jonathan Weiner The Beak of the Finch. The fascinating work of two British scientists who have spent twenty years cataloguing Darwin’s finches – in effect, witnessing the processes of evolution at first hand.

Margret Wittmer Floreana. One of Floreana’s original colonists describes how she conquered the privations of Galápagos life and gives her version of events in the Galápagos affair.

HISTORY AND SOCIETY

 Carlos de la Torre (ed.) The Ecuador Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Enthralling compilation of voices, opinions and writings by Ecuadorian politicians, authors, artists, intellectuals and activists, interspersed with essays on Ecuador by outsiders.

John Hemming The Conquest of the Incas. Marrying an academic attention to detail with a gripping narrative style, Hemming’s book is widely regarded as the best account of this devastating conquest.

Peter Henderson Gabriel García Moreno and Conservative State Formation in the Andes. This mould-breaking biography explores the life of a leader who helped Ecuador survive its deepest crisis and launched modernization, but who is still a figure of controversy more than 120 years after his murder.

Osvaldo Hurtado Portrait of a Nation: Culture and Progress in Ecuador. Thrust into the presidency at a young age following the death of Jaime Roldós, Hurtado sets out to explain Ecuador’s stumbling development over five centuries, with insights from his own experience as leader.

Wilma Roos and Omer van Renterghem Ecuador in Focus. A short introduction to Ecuador, with chapters on history, people, environment, economy and culture.

Mary Weismantel Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of Race and Sex in the Andes. Brilliantly explores the relationship and tensions between the races and sexes, set against the vivid backdrop of the Andes.

MEMOIRS AND TRAVEL

Ludwig Bemelmans The Donkey Inside (o/p). Classic narrative based on the author’s travels through Ecuador in the 1940s. A little old-fashioned and conservative, but masterfully written and a lively read.

Toby Green Saddled with Darwin: A Journey through South America. Elegantly written and loaded with wonderful anecdotes, an account of a madcap undertaking to follow Darwin’s travels across South America on horseback.

 Peter Lourie Sweat of the Sun, Tears of the Moon. Gripping account of the modern-day treasure-seekers intent on retrieving Atahualpa’s ransom from the Llanganates mountains.

 Henri Michaux Ecuador: A Travel Journal. Beautifully written impressions of Ecuador, based on the mystical Belgian author’s travels through the country in 1977, and presented in a mixture of prose, poetry and diary notes.

Tom Miller The Panama Hat Trail. Blending lively travel narrative with investigative journalism, an engaging book tracking the historical and geographical course of the Panama hat (which, despite the name, originated in Ecuador).

Karin Muller Along the Inca Road: A Woman’s Journey into an Ancient Empire. The author searches for the Royal Inca highway that once linked Ecuador to Chile and has dozens of adventures on the way.

Neville Shulman Climbing the Equator: Adventures in the Jungles and Mountains of Ecuador. A writer and explorer journeys through rainforests, meets indigenous people and attempts to climb Chimborazo, in a compelling and informative narrative.

 Paul Theroux The Old Patagonian Express. A cranky but entertaining account of the author’s train odyssey through the Americas, including a chapter on the time he spent in Quito (which he liked) and Guayaquil (which he hated).

 Moritz Thomsen Living Poor. An American Peace Corps volunteer writes lucidly about his time in the fishing community of Río Verde in Esmeraldas during the 1960s, and his mostly futile efforts to haul its people out of poverty. Thomsen never left Ecuador and followed up with three other autobiographical works – Farm on the River of Emeralds, The Saddest Pleasure and My Two Wars – before dying in a squalid apartment in Guayaquil in 1991.

Celia Wakefield Searching for Isabel Godin: An Ordeal on the Amazon, Tragedy and Survival. Fascinating account of the story of Isabel Godin, the Peruvian wife of Jean Godin, one of the key scientists on La Condamine’s mission.

Robert Whitaker The Mapmaker’s Wife. The story of Isabela Godin again, but with more of the science and history surrounding La Condamine’s mission.

MOUNTAINEERING AND HIKING

Darcy Gaechter, Larry Vermeeren and Don Beveridge The Kayaker’s Guide to Ecuador. Updated in 2014, this is the definitive guide to Ecuador’s world-class kayaking options, describing dozens of runs throughout the country.

Robert and Daisy Kunstaetter Trekking in Ecuador. Includes almost thirty beautiful, well-chosen routes, and plenty of maps, photos and elevation profiles.

Rob Rachowiecki, Mark Thurber and Betsy Wagenhauser Ecuador: Climbing and Hiking Guide. A long-standing climbing and hiking guide to Ecuador, which details more than 70 routes throughout the country.

Richard Snailham Sangay Survived. Brisk account of the attempt of six British soldiers to climb Volcán Sangay in 1976, when an unexpected eruption left two dead and the rest seriously injured and stranded.

 Edward Whymper Travels Amongst the Great Andes of the Equator. Exploits of the pioneering nineteenth-century mountaineer, who managed to rack up a number of first ascents, including Chimborazo, Cayambe and Antisana.

THE ORIENTE

Paul Barrett Law of the Jungle. For more than twenty years, the case of Amazon villagers versus oil giant Chevron continues unresolved. While the divisive lawsuit for as much as $18 billion carries on in courtrooms around the world, thousands still live in a contaminated swath of Ecuador.

Philippe Drescola The Spears of Twilight: Life and Death in the Amazon Jungle. Drescola, a French ethnologist, spent two years living among the Achuar of the Oriente in the 1970s, a time vividly and intelligently recounted in this memoir.

Gines Haro Yasuní Green Gold. Coffee-table book with a conscience, celebrating Yasuní and explaining the issues as part of a campaign to “keep oil underground” there.

Joe Kane Savages. An affecting and sensitive book on the protests of the Waorani against “the Company”, the monolithic multinational oil industry and its supporting agencies. It’s sprinkled with a poignant humour generated from the gap in cultures between the author and his subjects.

José Toribio Medina (ed.) The Discovery of the Amazon. The most detailed account of Francisco de Orellana’s voyage down the Amazon, with half the book given to the original source documents, translated into English.

Suzana Sawyer Crude Chronicles. The deepest exposition on the flowering of the indigenous and environmental movements in Ecuador against the ravages of neoliberal politics and global economics. A benchmark work in this field.

 Anthony Smith Explorers of the Amazon. An entertaining introduction to the exploration of the Amazon, streaked with wry humour. Includes chapters on Francisco de Orellana, La Condamine and Alexander von Humboldt. The Lost Lady of the Amazon, is about the epic journey of Isabela Godin.

Randy Smith Crisis Under the Canopy (Abya Yala, Ecuador). An in-depth look at tourism in the Oriente and its effect on the Waorani people.

WILDLIFE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

John Eisenberg and Kent Redford Mammals of the Neotropics: Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil. Useful guide to more than 650 species, including distribution maps, colour and monochrome photographs and background information on ecological and behavioural characteristics.

 Alexander von Humboldt Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent during the Years 1799–1804. Written by perhaps the greatest of all scientist-explorers, who composed 29 volumes on his travels across South America. The sixth volume of his Personal Narrative touches on Ecuador, and includes the ground-breaking botanical map of Chimborazo.

David L. Pearson and Les Beletsky Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands. Substantial wildlife guide including 96 colour plates, which gives a good overview of much of the flora and fauna you’re likely to stumble across on your travels.

 Robert S. Ridgely and Paul J. Greenfield The Birds of Ecuador. Monumental two-volume book (available separately) including a field guide with glorious colour plates of Ecuador’s 1600 bird species. The country’s definitive bird guide, and an indispensable resource for anyone interested in South American avifauna.

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LANGUAGE

The official language of Ecuador is Spanish, though at least twenty other first languages are spoken by native Ecuadorians, including nine dialects of Kichwa (also known by its Spanish spelling of “Quichua”) and a further eight indigenous languages of the Oriente. English and some other European languages are spoken in tourist centres, but otherwise you’ll need to know a bit of Spanish.

It’s an easy language to pick up, especially in the Ecuadorian sierra, whose inhabitants are known for speaking fairly slowly and clearly, usually pronouncing all the consonants of a word. On the coast, the accents are much harder to decipher, with the “s” sound frequently dropped and whole word endings missing, so that “arroz con pescado”, for example, becomes “arro’ con pe’ca’o”. Many beginners spend a week or longer getting to grips with the basics at one of Quito’s numerous language schools, most of which offer great-value lessons . Popular alternatives to Quito include Baños and Cuenca.

  Those who already speak Spanish will have no trouble adjusting to the way it’s spoken in Ecuador, which conforms to standard textbook Castilian, spoken without the lisped “c” and “z”. That said, it does have its own idiomatic peculiarities, one of which is the compulsive use of the word “nomás” (“just” or “only”), which crops up all over the place (“siga nomás” for “go ahead”, or “siéntate nomás” for “sit down”, for example). Something else that sets Ecuadorian Spanish apart from Iberian Spanish are the many indigenous words that pepper its vocabulary, particularly Kichwa words such as guagua (baby), mate (herbal infusion), pampa (plain), soroche (altitude sickness) and minga (communal labour). Ecuador also readily borrows from English, resulting in a slew of words regarded with horror by Spaniards, such as chequear (to check), parquear (to park), rentar (to rent), sánduche (sandwich) and computador (computer). This somewhat flexible approach makes Ecuadorians more than willing to accommodate a foreigner’s attempts to speak Spanish.

Pronunciation

The rules of pronunciation are pretty straightforward and, once you get to know them, strictly observed. Unless there’s an accent, words ending in d, l, r, and z are stressed on the last syllable, all others on the second last. All vowels are pure and short.

A somewhere between the “a” sound of back and that of father

E as in get

I as in police

O as in hot

U as in rule

C is soft before E and I, hard otherwise: cerca is pronounced “serka”.

G works the same way, a guttural “h” sound (like the ch in loch) before E or I, a hard G elsewhere – gigante becomes “higante”.

H is always silent

J is the same sound as a guttural G: jamón is pronounced “hamon”.

LL sounds like an English Y: tortilla is pronounced “torteeya”.

N is as in English unless it has a tilde over it, as with mañana, when it’s pronounced like the “n” in onion.

QU is pronounced like an English K.

R is rolled, RR doubly so.

V sounds more like B, vino becoming “beano”.

X is slightly softer than in English – sometimes almost SH – except between vowels in place names where it has an “H” sound – for example México (meh-hee-ko).

Z is the same as a soft “C”, so cerveza becomes “servesa”.

If you’re using a dictionary, remember that in Spanish CH, LL, and Ñ count as separate letters and are listed after the Cs, Ls, and Ns, respectively.

Words and phrases

We’ve listed a few essential words and phrases below, but if you’re travelling for any length of time a dictionary or phrasebook, such as the Rough Guide Dictionary Phrasebook: Spanish, is a worthwhile investment.

BASICS

yes, no

sí, no

please, thank you

por favor, gracias

where, when

dónde, cuándo

what, how much

qué, cuánto

here, there

aquí, allí

this, that

este, eso

now, later

ahora, más tarde

open, closed

abierto/a, cerrado/a

with, without

con, sin

good, bad

buen(o)/a, mal(o)/a

big

gran(de)

small

pequeño/a, chico

more, less

más, menos

today, tomorrow

hoy, mañana

yesterday

ayer

GREETINGS AND RESPONSES

Hello, Goodbye

Hola, Adiós

Good morning

Buenos días

Good afternoon/night

Buenas tardes/noches

See you later

Hasta luego

Sorry

Lo siento/discúlpeme

Excuse me

Con permiso/perdón

How are you?

¿Cómo está (usted)?

I (don’t) understand

(No) Entiendo

Not at all/You’re welcome

De nada

Do you speak English?

¿Habla (usted) inglés?

I (don’t) speak Spanish

(No) Hablo español

My name is…

Me llamo…

What’s your name?

¿Cómo se llama usted?

I am English

Soy inglés (a)

…American

…norteamericano (a)

…Australian

…australiano (a)

…Canadian

…canadiense (a)

…Irish

…irlandés (a)

…Scottish

…escosés (a)

…Welsh

…galés (a)

…New Zealander

…neozelandés (a)

ACCOMMODATION

twin room

una habitación doble

room with double bed

una habitación matrimonial

single room

una habitación sencilla

private bathroom

baño privado

shared bathroom

baño compartido

hot water (all day)

agua caliente (todo el día)

cold water

agua fría

fan

ventilador

air-conditioned

aire-acondicionado

tax

impuesto

mosquito net

tolda/mosquitero

key

llave

check-out time

hora de salida

Do you know…?

¿Sabe…?

I don’t know

No sé

There is (is there)?

(¿) Hay (?)

Give me…

Deme…

(one like that)

(uno así)

Do you have…?

¿Tiene…?

…a room

…una habitación

…with two beds/double bed

…con dos camas/cama matrimonial

…for one night/one week

…para una noche/una semana

It’s for one person/two people

Es para una persona/dos personas

It’s fine, how much is it?

¿Está bien, cuánto es?

It’s too expensive

Es demasiado caro

Don’t you have anything cheaper?

¿No tiene algo más barato?

Can one…? …camp (near) here

¿Se puede…? ¿…acampar aquí (cerca)?

Is there a hotel nearby?

¿Hay un hotel aquí cerca?

I want

Quiero

I’d like

Querría

What is there to eat?

¿Qué hay para comer?

What’s that?

¿Qué es eso?

What’s this called in Spanish?

¿Cómo se llama este en español?

DIRECTIONS AND TRANSPORT

bus terminal

terminal terrestre

ticket

pasaje

seat

asiento

aisle

pasillo

window

ventana

luggage

equipaje

How do I get to…?

¿Por dónde se va a…?

Left, right, straight on

Izquierda, derecha, derecho

Where is…?

¿Dónde está…?

…the bus station

…el terminal de buses

…the train station

…la estación de ferrocarriles

…the nearest bank

…el banco más cercano

…the post office

…el correo

…the toilet

…el baño

Where does the bus to… leave from?

¿De dónde sale el camión para…?

What time does the bus leave?

¿A qué hora sale el camión?

What time does the bus arrive?

¿A qué hora llega el bus?

How long does the journey take?

¿Cuánto tiempo demora el viaje?

Is this the train for… ?

¿Es éste el tren para…?

I’d like a (return) ticket to…

Querría pasaje (de ida y vuelta) para…

What time does it leave (arrive in…)?

¿A qué hora sale (llega en…)?

NUMBERS

1

un/uno/una

2

dos

3

tres

4

cuatro

5

cinco

6

seis

7

siete

8

ocho

9

nueve

10

diez

11

once

12

doce

13

trece

14

catorce

15

quince

16

dieciséis

17

diecisiete

18

dieciocho

19

diecinueve

20

veinte

21

veitiuno

30

treinta

40

cuarenta

50

cincuenta

60

sesenta

70

setenta

80

ochenta

90

noventa

100

cien(to)

101

ciento uno

200

doscientos

201

doscientos uno

500

quinientos

1000

mil

2000

dos mil

first

primero/a

second

segundo/a

third

tercero/a

fourth

cuarto/a

fifth

quinto/a

sixth

sixto/a

seventh

séptimo/a

eighth

octavo/a

ninth

noveno/a

tenth

décimo/a

DAYS AND MONTHS

Monday

lunes

Tuesday

martes

Wednesday

miércoles

Thursday

jueves

Friday

viernes

Saturday

sábado

Sunday

domingo

January

enero

February

febrero

March

marzo

April

abril

May

mayo

June

junio

July

julio

August

agosto

September

septiembre

October

octubre

November

noviembre

December

diciembre

Food and drink terms

The following should more than suffice as a basic menu reader for navigating restaurants, food stalls and markets throughout the country.

BASICS

aceite

oil

ají

chilli

ajo

garlic

almuerzo

lunch, set-menu lunch

arroz

rice

azúcar

sugar

la carta

the menu

cena

dinner

comida típica

traditional food

cuchara

spoon

cuchillo

knife

la cuenta

the bill

desayuno

breakfast

galletas

biscuits

hielo

ice

huevos

eggs

mantequilla

butter

merienda

set-menu dinner

mermelada

jam

miel

honey

mixto

mixed seafood or meats

mostaza

mustard

pan (integral)

(wholemeal) bread

pimienta

pepper

plato fuerte

main course

plato vegetariano

vegetarian dish

queso

cheese

sal

salt

salsa de tomate

tomato sauce

tenedor

fork

COOKING TERMS

a la parrilla

barbecued

a la plancha

lightly fried

ahumado

smoked

al ajillo

in garlic sauce

al horno

oven-baked

al vapor

steamed

apanado

breaded

asado

roast

asado al palo

spit roasted, barbecued

crudo

raw

duro

hard-boiled

encebollado

cooked with onions

encocado

in coconut sauce

frito

fried

picante

spicy hot

puré

mashed

relleno

filled or stuffed

revuelto

scrambled

saltado

sautéed

seco

stew (also means dry)

SOUPS

caldo

broth

caldo de gallina

chicken broth

caldo de patas

cattle-hoof broth

crema de espárragos

cream of asparagus

locro

cheese and potato soup

sopa

soup

sopa de bolas de verde

plantain dumpling soup

sopa del día

soup of the day

yaguarlocro

blood-sausage soup

MEAT AND POULTRY

aves

poultry

bistec

beef steak

carne

beef

cerdo/carne de chancho

pork

chicharrones

pork scratchings, crackling

chuleta

cutlet, chop (usually pork)

churrasco

beef steak with fried egg, rice and potatoes

conejo

rabbit

cordero

lamb

cuero/cueritos

pork crackling

cuy

guinea pig

jamón

ham

lechón

suckling pig

lomo

steak of indiscriminate cut

pato

duck

pavo

turkey

pollo

chicken

res

beef

ternera

veal

tocino

bacon

venado

venison

OFFAL

chunchules

intestines

guatita

tripe

hígado

liver

lengua

tongue

menudos

offal

patas

feet, trotters

riñones

kidneys

SEAFOOD AND FISH

anchoa

anchovy

atún

tuna

bonito

Pacific bonito (similar to tuna)

calamares

squid

camarón

prawn

cangrejo

crab

ceviche

seafood marinated in lime juice with onions

concha

clam, scallop

corvina

sea bass

erizo

sea urchin

langosta

lobster

langostino

king prawn

lenguado

sole

mariscos

seafood

mejillón

mussel

ostra

oyster

pescado

fish

trucha

trout

SNACKS

bocadillos

snacks

bolón de verde

baked cheese and plantain dumpling

canguil

popcorn

chifles

banana chips/crisps

empanada

cheese or meat pasty

hamburguesa

hamburger

humitas

ground corn and cheese wrapped in leaf and steamed

patacones

thick-cut fried banana/plantain

quimbolitos

Sweet cornmeal sponge wrapped in leaf and steamed

salchipapas

chips, sausage and sauces

sánduche

sandwich

tamales

ground maize with meat or cheese wrapped in leaf

tortilla de huevos

omelette (also called omelet)

tortilla de maíz

corn tortilla

tostada

toast

tostado

toasted maize

FRUIT

cereza

cherry

chirimoya

custard apple; cherimoya

ciruela

plum

durazno

peach

fruta

fruit

frutilla

strawberry

guayaba

guava

higo

fig

manzana

apple

maracuyá

passion-fruit

mora

blackberry

naranja

orange

pera

pear

piña

pineapple

plátano

plantain

tomate de arbol

tree tomato

toronja

grapefruit

Vegetables

aceitunas

olives

aguacate

avocado

alcachofa

artichoke

arvejas

peas

cebolla

onion

champiñón

mushroom

choclo

maize, sweetcorn

coliflor

cauliflower

espinaca

spinach

frijoles

beans

hongo

mushroom

lechuga

lettuce

legumbres

vegetables

lentejas

lentils

menestra

stew, typically beans and lentils

palmito

palm heart

papa

potato

papas fritas

chips (french fries)

pepinillo

gherkin

pepino

cucumber

tomate

tomato

verduras

vegetables

zanahoria

carrot

DESSERTS

cocados

coconut sweets

ensalada de frutas

fruit salad

flan

crème caramel

helado

ice cream

manjar de leche

very sweet caramel, made from condensed milk

pastas

pastries

pastel

cake

postres

desserts

torta

tart

DRINKS

agua (mineral)

(mineral) water

con gas

sparkling

sin gas

still

sin hielo

without ice

al clima

at room temperature

aguardiente

sugar-cane spirit

aromática

herbal tea

hierba luisa

lemon verbena

manzanilla

camomile

menta

mint

batido

milkshake

bebidas

drinks

café

coffee

café con leche

coffee with milk

caipiriña

cocktail of rum, lime, ice and sugar

cerveza

beer

chicha

fermented corn drink

cola/gaseosa

fizzy drink

jugo

juice

leche

milk

limonada

fresh lemonade

mate de coca

coca leaf tea

ron

rum

té

tea

vino (blanco/tinto)

(white/red) wine

Kichwa (Quichua)

Up to 20 percent of Ecuador’s population are Kichwa-speakers, the language of the Inca Empire, which in one form or another is spoken by indigenous communities from southern Colombia all the way to northern Chile. There are many regional differences, however, so that a speaker from Ecuador would have as much difficulty understanding a Peruvian, as a Spanish-speaker would have understanding Italian. Dialects also differ between areas of Ecuador, with noticeable variations between speakers of the highlands and of the Oriente, and again between highland areas such as Cañar, Chimborazo and Imbabura.

  Though there are regional differences, the basic phrases below should be understood by Kichwa-speakers throughout the country. Spellings do vary; you may see “c” written for “k”, or “hua/gua” for “wa”, for instance. Most people will also know Spanish, but exhibiting an interest in speaking Kichwa can only help increase pride in a language that has long been stigmatized and suppressed by the Spanish-speaking establishment. It’s little wonder that many speakers are rejecting the Spanish spelling of their language, “Quichua”, which you’ll still see commonly used. The effort spent taking some time to learn Kichwa will be repaid many times over in the access it will give you to Kichwa communities and the friendships you’ll make. Lessons are offered at EIL, Hernando de la Cruz N31-37 and Mariana de Jesús, Quito ( 02 2551937,  eilecuador.org), or you could try indigenous tour operators, such as Runa Tupari of Otavalo, who will be able to fix you up with homestays. You could also make enquiries and pick up resource materials at Abya Yala, a cultural centre in Quito dedicated to protecting and promoting indigenous culture, at 12 de Octubre 1430 and Wilson ( 02 2506251,   abyayala.org), or check the notice boards of the SAE.

USEFUL WORDS AND PHRASES

Hello

Imanalla

Good morning

Alli puncha

Good afternoon

Alli chishi

Good evening/night

Alli tuta

See you tomorrow

Kayakama

See you later

Asha kashkaman

Let’s go

Akuichi

How are you?

Imanalla kangui?

I am fine

Allillami kapani

Please

Jau man

Thank you (very much)

Pagui (shungulla)

Yes

Ari

No

Manan

I, my

Ñuka

You (informal)/(formal)

Kan/kikin

Excuse me

Kishpi chigway

It’s so cold!

Achachay!

It’s so hot!

Araray!

What’s your name?

Ima shuti kangui?

My name is

Ñuka shuti mikan

Please sit down

Tiyaripay

Say it again please

Kutin nipay

How old are you?

Mashna watata charingui?

NUMBERS

1

shuk

2

ishki

3

kimsa

4

chusku

5

pichka

6

sukta

7

kanchis

8

pusak

9

iskun

10

chunka

11

chunka shuk

12

chunka ishki

20

ishki chunka

21

ishki chunka shuk

100

pachak

1000

waranka

2345

ishki waranka kimsa pachak chuksu chunka pichka

1,000,000

junu

COMMON WORDS IN NAMES AND PLACES

alli

good

allpa

earth, soil

chaka

bridge

chullpi

corn

churi

son

huarmi

wife

huasi

house

inti

sun

jaka

abyss

jatun

big

kari

man

killa

moon, month

kincha

corral

kucha (cocha)

lake

llakta

village, community

makui

hand

mama

mother, polite term for an older woman

ñan

path, street

ñaña

sister

pacha

hour, weather

pachamama

nature, mother earth

pakarina

sunrise

pichu

chest

pirka

wall

pishku

bird

rasu

snow

raymi

fiesta

ruku

old

rumi

stone

runa

indigenous person

sacha

forest

sara

corn

sisa

flower

sumak

beautiful

tayta

father, polite term for an older man

tullu

bone

uma

head

urku

mountain

warmi

woman

wawa (guagua)

baby

wayna

lover

yaku

water, river

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GLOSSARY

Adobe Sun-dried mud brick

Aguas termales Hot springs

Ahigra A bag made of tightly woven straw, often dyed in bright colours

Apartado Postal box

Artesanía Traditional handicraft

Balneario Thermal baths resort

Bargueño Colonial wooden chest, inlaid with bone, ivory and other decorative materials in geometric patterns

Barrio District, quarter or suburb

Buseta Small bus

Cabaña Cabin

Calle Street

Camioneta Pick-up truck

Campesino Literally from the countryside, used to describe mestizo rural farmers

Canoa Dugout canoe

Casilla Post box

C.C. abbreviation of centro comercial, or shopping centre

Chicha fermented maize drink

Chiva Open-sided wooden bus mostly found in rural areas

Cholo Coastal fisherman, but also used in the sierra to refer to mestizo artisans and traders in the Cuenca region, most commonly applied to women (“la chola Cuencana”)

Choza A rough-thatched hut or shack

Colectivo Collective taxi

Cordillera Mountain range

Criollo “Creole”: used historically to refer to a person of Spanish blood born in the American colonies, but nowadays as an adjective to describe something (such as food or music) as “typical” or “local”

Curandero Healer

Fibra Open fibreglass boat used as transport between islands in the Galápagos

Finca Small farm

Flete Small boat for hire

Folklórica Andean folk music

Gringo Slightly (but not always) pejorative term for an American specifically, but also used generally for any foreigner from a non-Spanish-speaking country

Guardaparque Park warden

Hacienda Farm or large estate

Indígena Used adjectivally to mean “indigenous”, or as a noun to refer to an indigenous person

Lancha Launch, small boat

Lek Bird courtship display area

Local “Unit” or “shop” in a shopping centre

Malecón Coastal or riverside avenue

Mestizo Person of mixed Spanish and indigenous blood

Minga Kichwa term for collective community work

Mirador Viewpoint

Montuvio Mestizo farm worker in the coastal interior

Mototaxi Motorbike powered taxi with passenger seats

Municipio Town hall or town council

Nevado Snowcapped mountain

Pampa Plain

Panga Dinghy, usually with a motor

Páramo High-altitude grassland, found above 3000m

Peña Nightclub where live music is performed, often folk music

Petrolero Oil-worker

Plata Silver; slang for money

Pucará Fort

Quebrada Ravine, dried-out stream

Quinta Villa or fine country house

Ranchera Open-sided wooden bus mostly found in rural areas

Sala Room or hall

Selva Jungle or tropical forest

Serrano From the sierra or highlands

s/n used in addresses to indicate “sin número”, or without a number

Soroche Altitude sickness

SS HH Abbreviation for servicios higiénicos, toilets

Tambo Rest-house on Inca roads

Tarabita Simple cable car

Termas Thermal baths, hot springs

Triciclero Tricycle-taxi driver

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