Ecuador & Galapagos

Is it a bus or a train? Whichever, the Chiva Express whisks me from Quito’s ancient cobbles and domed cathedrals south along Ecuador’s Avenue of the Volcanoes. The green paddocks and gum trees could be in Canterbury, but the soaring peaks of the Andes dwarf the Southern Alps, and when the Express slows and a cowboy in fox-fur chaps canters alongside the tracks, I know I’m far from home.

There are wild llamas and horses, a cuppa with a local kick, and a claim that though it’s taken hours to drive here, it’s only 20 minutes back to Quito by lahar, if Cotopaxi stirs again. Then it’s dinner between Inca walls, with armadillo-shell guitar music and bed by firelight in a hacienda with bull-fighting connections.

Ecuador has more species per square kilometre than anywhere else on earth, and in the Galapagos Islands it seems as though most of them are lying across the path in front of me. Iguanas, sealions, tropical penguins, giant tortoises… none of them take any notice of me but that’s fine because I’m agog enough for all of us.