Ecuador

The equator gives Ecuador its name, crossing the country from the Pacific to the Amazon forest. The land climbs from coastal banana plantations over a double chain of the Andes, lined with volcanoes such as Cotopaxi, then drops into the Oriente rainforest. Because the earth bulges at the equator, the summit of Chimborazo is the point on its surface farthest from the planet’s centre. Far offshore, the Galápagos Islands sit where cold and warm currents meet.

Potters of the Valdivia culture shaped clay figurines on the coast more than five thousand years ago. The Inca took the highlands only in the late fifteenth century, and the Spanish arrived in the 1530s, just after a war between the half-brothers Atahualpa and Huáscar. Antonio José de Sucre won the battle of Pichincha in May 1822; the territory joined Gran Colombia and left it in 1830. Charles Darwin landed on the Galápagos in 1835, and what he saw fed his thinking on evolution.

Kichwa communities in the highlands keep their own dress and mark the June solstice with Inti Raymi, and Otavalo’s weavers sell ponchos at a Saturday market. What the world calls a Panama hat is plaited from toquilla straw in Ecuador. Guayaquil starts the day with encebollado, a tuna and cassava soup, and highland families roast cuy, guinea pig, for celebrations. Oil from the Amazon crosses the Andes by pipeline to Esmeraldas, the coast exports bananas, cacao and shrimp, and greenhouses near Cayambe grow roses.