I went to Ecuador knowing about the gangs, murders and television-station attack. On my first night in Quito, I lay awake listening to sirens and wondered whether everyone who had warned me not to go had been right. CBS News Report on News Broadcast take over Then I met Ecuador. Not the country I'd watched on the news. The people who actually lived there. And those are two very different things. Everyone Had Told Me Ecuador Was Dangerous By the time I travelled to Ecuador in

Three days in Ecuador's cloud forest taught me that owning a 70–200mm lens doesn't make you a wildlife photographer, howler monkeys don't care about your itinerary, and “mi perro no es peligroso” is apparently not enough to get a street dog into a hostel. I went to Mindo because I wanted a taste of the Amazon without actually going to the Amazon. I'd just finished the volunteering part of my time in Ecuador and was starting the adventure side of the trip, but I needed to retu

Two weeks volunteering with children in Quito gave me access to a side of Ecuador I would probably never have experienced as a tourist. It also left me deeply uncomfortable with an industry that can turn helping people into something travellers buy. On my first morning volunteering in Quito, I was given some fairly straightforward advice: don't take my phone, don't carry money I wasn't prepared to lose and, whatever happened, don't lose Jordy. Jordy was an Ecuadorian universi