Ecuador

There’s a lot of noise in the travel media about how to save money on your vacation, on how to get more out of your travel budget. The problem is, most of that advice is focused on the wrong things. Close to a decade ago, I wrote in Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune …

A lot of travel bloggers really don’t need to ever do a year-end summary because they’ve already told you about everything they ate for lunch in each destination and every monument they snapped a photo of. I try to be more evergreen than that, telling stories that are reasonably timeless and giving advice that is …

I’m in Ecuador right now, the third time I’ve been here. I’m finally making it to Cuenca this time. I’m sure I’ll be back again because after three trips I have still just scratched the surface. This is a small country compared to many of its neighbors, but due to some natural geographic advantages, there’s …

In one city, should you take a taxi from the far-flung airport to the center, it will cost you more than $250. In another city, taking a taxi from the airport to the center will cost you less than $5. How much does that tell you about expenses in the destination? Quite a lot. The …

There was a time when people rode trains all over Ecuador, from the capital of Quito to Otovalo, Cuenca, and the coastal port of Guayaquil. More than 60 trains a day departed from the main station in southern Quito. Then came the age of the automobile, which killed off the trains in a lot of …