Ecuador is located in northwest South America and is about the size of Great Britain. Its capital is Quito. The city makes the ideal base from which to explore contrasting and ever-surprising regions. From its historic, World Heritage-listed heart you can experience a huge range of places, adventures and activities within just a few hours. Safe, friendly and easily-accessible, Quito is a world within itself.


The Andes are Ecuador and Quito’s defining feature. They run longitudinally through the country, rising up along its length like the fossilized spine of an ancient dinosaur to peaks of over 6,000 metres. They divide the country into three: the Highlands, the Amazon and the Pacific coast – not forgetting the Galápagos Islands, six hundred miles offshore. Place this spine on the Equator, after which the country is named, in the heart of the Tropics with prodigious quantities of sunlight and rainfall, and you get what biologists call a ‘biodiversity hotspot’ and what travellers call a great holiday.