"Ecuador, so tiny on the map of the world, has always
possessed the grandeur of a great country to those who know her
well."
- Albert B. Franklin, Ecuador: Portrait of a People
Sitting on the equator between Colombia and Peru, Ecuador
is the smallest of the Andean nations, covering an area no bigger
than Nevada. For all its diminutive size, however, the country is
packed with the most startling contrasts of scenery, taking in
steaming tropical rainforests, windswept highlands, ice-capped
volcanoes and palm-fringed beaches, all within easy reach of the
capital, Quito. It's a land of bold contours and heightened
colours, where you can find yourself beneath a canopy of dripping
vegetation amongst clouds of neon-coloured butterflies one day, and
in a highland market, mixing with scarlet-ponchoed indígenas
the next. It's also a country of astounding biodiversity, boasting
1600 species of bird (more per area than any other South American
country), 4500 species of butterfly and over 3500 species of
orchid, to cite just a few examples. Add to this the country's
stunning colonial architecture and diverse indigenous groups, and
it becomes clear why Ecuador is regarded by many as a sort of South
America in miniature, offering a pocket-sized microcosm of almost
everything travellers hope to find on this bewitching continent. As
if more were called for, its attractions are triumphantly capped
off by the Galápagos Islands, whose extraordinary wildlife has gone
down in history for its pivotal role in shaping Charles Darwin's
theories on evolution.
Geographically, Ecuador's mainland divides neatly into three
distinct regions running the length of the country in parallel
strips. In the middle is the sierra , formed by the eastern
and western chains of the Andes that surge abruptly into the clouds
from the lowlands either side. Punctuated by over thirty volcanoes,
the two chains are joined by a series of high plateaux at around
2800m above sea level, separated by gentle transverse ridges, or
nudos ("knots" of hills). This is the agricultural and
indigenous heartland of Ecuador, a region of patchwork fields
crawling up the mountainsides, of stately haciendas and dozens of
remote communities. The sierra is also home to many of the
country's oldest and most important cities, including Quito. East
of the sierra is the Oriente , a large, sparsely populated
area extending into the upper Amazon basin, much of it covered by
dense tropical rainforest - an exhilarating, exotic region, though
under increasing threat from oil-production and colonization. West
of the sierra, the coastal region is formed by a fertile
alluvial plain, used for growing tropical crops such as bananas,
sugar, coffee and cacao, and bordered on its Pacific seaboard by a
string of beaches, mangrove swamps, shrimp farms and ports. Almost
a thousand kilometres of ocean separate the coastline from the
Galápagos archipelago, annexed by Ecuador in 1832.
All this provides a home to some fourteen million people, the
majority of whom live on the coast and in the sierra. They are
descendants, for the most part, of the various indigenous
populations that first inhabited Ecuador's territory, of the
Incas who colonized these lands in the late fifteenth
century, of the Spaniards who conquered the Inca empire in
the 1530s and of the African slaves brought by the Spanish
colonists. Although the mixing of blood over many centuries has
resulted in a largely mestizo (mixed) population, the
indigenous component remains very strong, particularly among the
Quichua-speaking communities of the rural sierra, and the various
ethnic groups of the Oriente such as the Shuar, the Achuar, the
Huaorani and Secoya, while on the north coast there's a significant
black population. As in many parts of Latin America, social and
economic divisions between indígenas , blacks,
mestizos and an elite class of whites remain deeply
entrenched, exacerbated here by a slew of recent economic and
political crises. And yet, even as poverty and unemployment
increase, as their national currency is lost to the US dollar and
their political leaders continually fail to tackle the country's
problems, the overwhelming majority of Ecuadorians remain
resilient, remarkably cheerful, and extremely courteous and
welcoming towards visitors.