A Journey Across Worlds (Ecuador)

Eleven nights across Ecuador on a Royal Enfield, from the Andes down into the Amazon, out to the Pacific and back through cloud forest, which is a great deal of country for a nation smaller than the United Kingdom.

Quito opens it, where the colonial centre is UNESCO listed and stands on an Inca site, then Chugchilan on the Avenue of the Volcanoes with Cotopaxi in view, at an indigenous mountain village at 3,200 metres. Salinas de Guaranda follows by way of the Quilotoa crater rim at 3,900 metres, a flooded caldera of green water, to an old salt-mining village at 3,500.

Macas comes next, with cheese making alongside locals, a road running at 4,300 metres beneath the snow of Chimborazo at 6,310, and the active volcano and high lakes of Sangay National Park, before the descent into the Amazon basin and a town of Shuar heritage. Cuenca follows across the rainforest and its waterfalls, a colonial city known as the gem of the Andes.

Cumanda is next on the Qhapaq Nan, the Inca royal road, by way of the Ingapirca site, where Inca and Canari building stand together, with a night in a high jungle lodge. Puerto Lopez follows on the Pacific, a fishing town with Isla de la Plata offshore, known locally as the little Galapagos. The equator gets crossed twice on this route, once at a beach and once at the monument north of Quito with its museum. Bike rental is included and the price is quoted per person.