Three,Excellent,Adventures,Hol travel,insurance Three Excellent Adventures on a Holiday to Ecuador

Torres del Paine is among the biggest of Chile’s national parks, occupying almost 600,000 acres (242,000 ha) of land in the south on the border with Argentina. It is also among the most important, receiving a significant proportion of domes Like any American, traveling occasionally is just what I love doing and I bet you share the same stuff with me. But traveling does not mean that you would be safe. Escaping from our job and other stressful activities is just something that w

If you enjoy culture, scenery and history, mixed with wildlife and opportunities to stretch your legs, then Ecuador’s compact size makes an ideal holiday. You can see a huge amount in a week or so, but Ecuador has more than enough to keep you enthralled for three weeks and more if you have the time.Visitors on their way to the Galapagos Islands, which are owned by Ecuador, stop over on the mainland and wonder whether they should have stayed longer. The answer is resoundingly ‘yes’ – Ecuador has a huge amount to discover and explore.One of the big surprises is the standard of accommodation, from smart hotels in Quito (Ecuador’s capital) to historic haciendas in the Andes offering high-end country lodgings, and well-managed wildlife lodges deep in the Amazon jungle. There’s good food too, from smart city restaurants offering everything from pizzas to haute cuisine in Ecuadorian flavors, to hearty meals of traditional farmhouse cooking. It’s true that spit-roasted guinea pig is a local delicacy on the streets, but if you’d rather leave them running around you’ve got plenty of other choices!Number 1: QuitoQuito is the most fascinating city in the whole of the Andes. Its location is fabulous, it is steeped in history and culture, and it is a lively and attractive modern city too.More or less slap bang on the equator, Quito sits in a cleft between two lines of volcanic peaks that form a dramatic backdrop and sculpt the city’s layout. At its heart is the historic city of Old Quito, founded a thousand years ago, annexed by the Incas, and overbuilt by Spanish colonialists. Its evocative narrow streets and wide squares are lined with palaces, mansions, convents and churches laden with gold. Fittingly, Quito’s Old City was the very first to be declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.Spend at least two days in Quito, longer if you can, to explore the city, visit some of its art galleries, museums and archaeological collections, and soak up the atmosphere. There are also side trips to the equator monument which straddles the line, to the bird-rich cloud forests of Mindo, to the volcanoes (including a cable car to the top of Pichincha - the one closest to the city), and to newly-discovered temples of Quito’s ancient peoples. You’ll eat well, and there is a good selection of places to stay, including some very characterful boutique-style hotels in converted mansions in the Old City.Number 2: The AmazonEast of Quito, the Andes plunge from snow-covered peaks to the dense jungle of the Amazon basin in just 30 miles. Having lost 10,000 feet in the blink of an eye, it will be another 2,000 miles before the land descends the final 1,000 feet to the sea.Nutrients freshly washed from the mountains mean the rain forest here is among the lushest in the whole of the Amazon and hence very rich in wildlife. You’ll see far more here than further down the river where it becomes mightier and mightier.To include a trip to the Amazon in your Ecuador holiday just catch a short flight from Quito, take a fast boat along the Napo river and you have a choice of three excellent wildlife lodges: Napo Wildlife Centre, Sacha Lodge and La Selva – each offering a slightly different take on the wildlife experience of this remarkable area. There’s an interesting river-boat cruise too.Number 3: The Avenue of the VolcanoesThis part of the Andes is still growing, pushing upwards along its length and bursting into chains of volcanoes either side of a long valley. Alexander von Humboldt travelled here in 1802 and coined the phrase ‘the Avenue of the Volcanoes’ to describe the succession of peaks that line the route southwards from Quito, including 15 volcanoes over 15,000ft.Close to the city is Cotopaxi, a smooth cone rising well above the snowline above high open moorlands. You can stay near here in venerable haciendas that eked out a living from cattle and llamas, now supplemented with lodging for travelers drawn by wonderful walking and horseback riding warmed by hearty meals and log fires in the Andean air.Chimborazo, further south, was thought to be the highest mountain in the world until the discovery of Everest. By one measure it still is. Measured from sea level Everest is higher, but Chimborazo’s peak is further from the center of the Earth, thanks to the bulge around the equator. It towers behind the small town of Riobamba, where once a week ice chipped by axe from its high glaciers is brought down on the back of a donkey to keep the food fresh on market day.