How It Started: A Terrible Outfit Decision in Quito
I arrived in Quito with one pair of boardshorts, two shirts with mysterious stains, and absolutely zero plan. The city was drizzling that particular Andean drizzle—neither rain nor mist, just aggressive humidity with attitude. My mate Tomás had messaged: 'Mate, you need to eat something that isn't hostel pasta. Full stop.'
So I did the 3 Hours Local Food Tour in Quito 3 Hours Local Food Tour in Quito and it properly changed how I moved through the city. Our guide—a woman named Gloria who'd lived in the neighbourhood for forty years—didn't take us to Instagram bait. Instead, we found ourselves in a tiny mercado in La Mariscal where she pointed out which vendor had the actual good ceviche (not the tourist trap version), which bakery the construction workers lined up at before dawn, and a juice bar where a bloke was blending fresh naranjilla like he was conducting an orchestra. I ate empanadas that tasted like someone's abuela's love language. By hour two, I wasn't just fed—I was oriented. I understood how Quito breathed.
Then Gloria took us to a choripán stand where I stood next to a Ecuadorian bloke in a three-piece suit, both of us dripping grease onto our trousers like it was a religious experience. That's the moment I understood I needed to slow down and actually stay a while.
The Highlands Beckon: Cuenca and the Lakes That Humbled Me
From Quito, I caught a bus south (eight hours, two stops for petrol, one inexplicable livestock transaction I chose not to investigate). Cuenca arrived like a Victorian postcard—all balconies and cobblestones and the Río Tomebamba winding through like it had somewhere important to be.
I had exactly four days. I used one of them on Cajas Unveiled: A Half-Day Escape from Cuenca Cajas Unveiled: A Half-Day Escape from Cuenca. Mate, this wasn't a walk. It was a proper hike through Cajas National Park—a genuinely alien landscape where the earth goes vertical and the lakes look like they were painted by someone on mushrooms. We climbed through páramo grassland where wind could knock you sideways, past gnarled Polylepis trees that look like they're from another planet, and alongside these glacial lakes so perfectly turquoise they looked fake. My guide mentioned that most tourists hit the obvious spots and leave. We barely saw another person. At one point, standing at 3,800 metres with visibility for about forty kilometres, I actually sat down and did nothing for ten minutes. That's rare for me. That's the good stuff.
Cuenca itself became my unexpected home base. I had no rush. I walked the same streets twice. I learned the name of the bloke who made my coffee. This is how you're supposed to travel through the Andes—slowly enough to notice things.
Into the Abyss: Baños and the Waterfalls That Tried to Kill Me
But eventually the dirtbag in me got restless. I'd heard whispers about Baños—a town that sits in this improbable valley where Ecuador's geography goes absolutely mental. High, wet, green, and surrounded by waterfalls like someone was showing off.
Day one, I made a classic dirtbag mistake: I showed up at my accommodation and immediately signed up for the worst-named adventure activity imaginable. But the name was honest. The Best Extreme Canyoning—Cashaurco in Baños Ecuador The Best Extreme Canyoning -Cashaurco in -Banos Ecuador was exactly that. Five hours of abseiling down waterfalls, sliding through natural rock chutes like you're being digested by a mountain, and swimming through emerald pools that looked like they should charge entry fees to exist.
I'm not gonna lie: I was terrified. Heights aren't my problem. Gravity is. But our guide—a Baños local named Cristóbal who'd done this route about eight thousand times—kept saying 'relax your feet' and 'let the water carry you' and other advice that made sense until I was standing on a rock looking down a thirty-metre waterfall attached to a rope that suddenly seemed very thin. The abseil itself was transcendent. Rappelling down the actual fall, with water slamming your face, your stomach somewhere near your ankles—it's not fear. It's clarity. Everything else stops mattering.
The slide through Cashaurco Canyon was simultaneously the best and most humiliating moment of my trip. There's a natural rock slide carved smooth by millennia of water, angled at something that feels suicidal. You sit down and gravity makes all your decisions for you. I lost a flip-flop. (Of course I did.) Cristóbal fished it out of an emerald pool about fifteen minutes later whilst I floated there, simultaneously grateful and ashamed.
The River Demands Respect: Rafting Through Reality
Still buzzing from the canyoning, still drying out from the pools, I woke up the next morning and thought: 'Surely I haven't learned enough lessons yet.'
I booked the Rafting Tour Rafting Tour for five hours of whitewater paddling through the Ecuadorian highlands. The description said 'genuine adrenaline rush' and I should've taken that seriously. This wasn't a scenic float where you drift past scenery and take selfies. This was proper Class III and IV rapids where the river was making executive decisions about your day.
Our guide was a woman named María who'd apparently done this route so many times she could paddle it backwards. We were five paddlers—me, María, two German climbers, and an Ecuadorian bloke named Diego who worked in tech in Quito and was down for the weekend doing something that made him feel alive. That I understood.
The first rapid hit about twenty minutes in and my brain recalibrated what 'wet' meant. Water filled the raft, filled my mouth, filled my sinuses with a force that suggested Ecuador was trying to flush something from my system. María was shouting paddle commands. Diego was laughing like a maniac. The German climbers looked mildly annoyed that something was challenging them. I discovered that when you're fully committed to a rhythm—dig dig dig pull—fear doesn't really register. It's just your body and the river having a conversation.
There was a moment, about two hours in, where we pulled the raft onto a beach and María pointed out where three rivers converged. She talked about the geology, the water systems, the fact that we were riding on the eastern slope of the Andes. It was the first time I'd thought about why the landscape actually looked this way. Not what it looked like. Why.
Quito Again: The View That Ties Everything Together
I had one more day before my flight. I could've ignored Quito entirely, but I'd left some pieces of myself there. So I booked the Quito private tour: Half of the World, Historic Center and Cable Car Quito private tour : Half of the World, Historic Center and Cable Car and spent eight hours doing the city properly.
The private tour meant we could move at human speed, stop for actual coffee, and avoid the tour-bus choreography. The historic centre hit different now that I'd spent time understanding how the city worked. The Gothic Basilica's tower gave us a view across the entire city to the mountains beyond. The equator monument, with its slightly arbitrary line painted on the earth, became a decent metaphor for how we divide things that refuse to be divided.
But the cable car up to the mirador was the thing that stuck. Sitting in a swaying cable car, watching Quito spread out below and the eastern Andes rolling away into distance, I thought about Cristóbal in the waterfall, María paddling upriver, Gloria explaining choripán philosophy. You don't get those moments on a scheduled tour with fifty people. You get them when you slow down enough to be present.
The Lesson I Didn't Want
I found both flip-flops eventually (one in the Baños hotel laundry, one in my actual bag where I'd apparently stored it whilst panicking). Ecuador didn't teach me anything new, exactly. But it reminded me why I do this. Not for the gram. Not for 'experiences' to collect. But for the specific moment when you're wet and terrified and alive, and the person next to you is also wet and terrified and alive, and suddenly the whole thing—the whole planet—makes sense.
Take your time in Ecuador. Do the adventures. But do them between long breakfasts and walks that have no destination. That's where the real trip happens.
