Oriente Province

Pros: Beautiful scenery and interesting events
Cons: Potentially terrifying, can be delayed

Almost anyone going to the Oriente provinces of Ecuador will eventually take the Banos road, some more than once. I've been riding back and forth along that one lane road of hairpin turns and rickety bridges since I was in kindergarten, and therefore...

Pros: access to rain forest, knowledgeable guides, colonial style housing
Cons: insects, midday heat, lack of big animals, mud

I thoroughly enjoyed the three days I spent in Ecuador's rain forest as part of a ten day tour of the country. We began our journey with a flight from Quito to Coca. We then traveled by outrigger canoe for two hours along the Napo River, a tributary of...

Pros: Mother Nature at its best.
Cons: It's pretty isolated so you need to be prepared for anything.

There isn't a more beautiful place on the whole earth than the Amazon basin located at the south end of Ecuador. I was in a province called Zamora for two weeks during the month of march in 1997 and thought I was in Paradise. The time of year that I...