We visited this beautiful South American country in December of 2023. Since we were visiting this country for the first time and not knowing much Spanish, we decided to look for guided tours. We contacted a few tour companies, comparing the itineraries and prices offered by each of them. Also, we did not plan on travelling to Galapagos on this trip.
We found an excellent 7-day private guided tour on Viator https://www.viator.com/. It was reasonably priced and the itinerary encompassed everything from the majestic Andes mountains, volcanoes, Amazon rainforests and waterfalls to Inca ruins, magnificent churches and plazas. The itinerary did not include Quito. We flew into Quito a couple of days early and did a self guided tour of the old city.
We were pleasantly surprised to find out, that the official currency of Ecuador is the US dollar. While US dollar bills are used in Ecuador, the country issues its own centavo coins. US dollars have been used in Ecuador since 2000 and replaced the former currency, the Ecuadorian sucre.
We followed the route shown in the map below.
