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Parque Nacional Cajas

Parque Nacional Cajas

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May 20, 2024

　　Only 30km west of Cuenca, Parque Nacional Cajas encompasses 2854 sq km of golden moor-like páramo (high-altitude grassland) dotted with hundreds of chilly lakes that shine like jewels against a bleak, rough countryside.

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Parque Nacional Machalilla

　　Preserving isolated beaches, coral formations, two offshore islands, tropical dry forest, coastal cloud forest, archaeological sites and 200 sq km of ocean, Ecuador's only coastal national park is a marvelous and unique destination. Within its nature-rich, strange-looking forest are more than 200 species of birds, including coastal parrots and parakeets,...

El Chato Tortoise Reserve

　　South of Santa Rosa is El Chato Tortoise Reserve, where you can observe giant tortoises in the wild. When these virtually catatonic, prehistoric-looking beasts extend their accordion-like necks to feed, it’s an impressive sight. The reserve is also a good place to look for short-eared owls, Darwin’s finches, yellow warblers,...

Parque Nacional Yasuní

　　Yasuní is Ecuador’s biggest mainland park at 9820 sq km, boasting all manner of terrain from marshes to rivers to tropical rainforest. A Unesco Biosphere Reserve, it has more than 600 bird species (including harpy eagles) as well as jaguars, pumas and tapirs. ...

　　The summit of this volcano (1097m) is famous for its 7km-wide caldera and steaming fumaroles. Hundreds of giant tortoises can be seen here, especially from June to December, and juvenile hawks soar on thermal updrafts. The view is fantastic. Permits are required to hike this long, steep and waterless trail...

Reserva de Producción Faunística Cuyabeno

　　This beautiful reserve is a unique flooded rainforest covering 6034 sq km around Río Cuyabeno. Seasonally inundated with water, the flooded forest provides a home to diverse aquatic species and birdlife. Macrolobium and ceiba treetops thrust out from the underwater forest, creating a stunning visual effect. The blackwater rivers, rich...

Parque Nacional Sangay

　　This 2710-sq-km national park contains three of Ecuador’s most magnificent volcanoes – the mightily active Sangay, the remittently active Tungurahua and the extinct El Altar. Because the park ranges from glaciated mountain tops to tropical rainforests, it offers flora, fauna and terrain of immense diversity. The two official park entrances...

　　Squirrel monkeys cavort above the walkways at highly rated Jamu lodge, where the jungle feels close at hand. Dugout-canoe trips, walks through swamps knee-deep in mud to spot the likes of anacondas and pink river dolphins, swims in lagoons and memorable nighttime excursions all contribute to a vivid wilderness experience....

　　About an hour’s boat ride northeast of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno is León Dormido (Kicker Rock), so named because of its resemblance to a sleeping lion. León Dormido is an imposing, vertical, sheer-walled tuff cone that has been eroded in half; smaller boats can sail between the two rocks. Because there’s...

Laguna Quilotoa

　　About 14km north of Zumbahua, the famous volcanic-crater lake of Laguna Quilotoa is a gasp-inducing sight. A lookout on the precipitous crater rim offers stunning views of the mirror-green lake 400m below (it glows phosphorescent green near some of the rocky edges) and the snowcapped peaks of Cotopaxi and Iliniza...

Reserva de Producción de Fauna Chimborazo

　　Volcán Chimborazo and Volcán Carihuairazo are both within the Reserva de Producción de Fauna Chimborazo. It is called a ‘fauna-production reserve’ because it is home to hundreds of vicuña (a wild relative of the llama). Once hunted to extinction, they were donated by Chile and Bolivia in the 1980s. Now...

　　Ecuador’s best-preserved archaeological site, Ingapirca, with its semi-intact temple, grazing llamas and open fields, is definitely worth a stopover if you are headed this way. The ruins were originally used by the Cañari people as an observatory. The strategic site was later taken over and developed by the Inca during...

Podocarpus National Park

　　This national park fills in much of the triangle between Loja, Zamora and Vilcabamba, as well as a huge swath to the southeast. Because altitude ranges so greatly within the park borders – from around 900m in the lowland sector to over 3600m in the highland sector – Podocarpus has...

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