Ecuador

Ecuador surprised me in a way I wasn't expecting. I'd come thinking I knew what Andean South America would feel like — and then I stood in the Plaza Grande in Quito under a grey, close sky and felt the altitude in my chest and the colonial stone in my eyes, and it was nothing like what I'd imagined. The old centre of Quito moves at a slow pace; the streets are cobbled and steep, the air is cool and faintly thin, and the Gothic bulk of the Basilica del Voto Nacional just towers over everything like it was dropped there from another century.

Baños was the other version of Ecuador entirely. Loud, green, wet, adrenaline-soaked. The Pailón del Diablo was the loudest waterfall I've stood next to — the spray soaks you before you even reach the viewing platform, and the rock face behind it is so close it feels like the mountain is breathing on you. Then there was Parque Aventura San Martín, dangling over a river gorge on wire bridges, the canyon walls close on both sides. That afternoon felt very alive.

Guayaquil was hot and flat and coastal in the best way — a completely different mood from Quito. The Malecón along the river, the Guayaquil sign, the monkey sculptures, the cathedral in Parque Seminario — it has an easygoing confidence to it. And the food throughout the whole country was genuinely good: tamales wrapped in banana leaf, locro de papa, seco de pollo, fresh ceviche. Ecuador packs a lot into a small country.