The sierra
Around one hundred million years ago, the westward-moving South American tectonic plate collided with the eastward-moving Nazca plate, which holds the southern Pacific Ocean. As the Nazca plate was forced under the other, the Andes mountains were thrown up along the edge of the South American landmass. In Ecuador, they consist of two parallel mountain chains, or cordilleras, separated by a broad central valley - which the German explorer, Alexander von Humboldt, named the Avenue of the Volcanoes, in 1802. This central valley is itself divided into a series of fertile basins ( hoyas ), cut off from one another by "knots" ( nudos ) of intermediate hills. The basins have been populated for hundreds of years - in several cases, thousands of years - and even today are home to almost half the country's population.

A relatively young mountain range, the sharp jagged peaks of the Andes, reaching almost 7000m in places, are not yet rounded by erosion and are still growing as the two underground giants continue to rumble against each other, making Ecuador geologically unstable and volatile. Not only are earthquakes and tremors common, but Ecuador also has a number of active volcanoes : Cotopaxi, at 5897m, is one of the highest in the world. Ten of Ecuador's volcanoes exceed the snow line (5000m), and the summit of Chimborazo, at 6310m, actually surpasses Everest as the point furthest from the centre of the Earth, thanks to the planet's bulge around the equator. Major eruptions occurred as recently as 1999, when, in October, Tungurahua, which overlooks Baños, spewed out a river of lava, forcing the evacuation of the local population for several months. Two months later, Guagua Pichincha, bordering the Quito valley, also exploded, releasing an eleven-kilometre-high mushroom cloud of ash, vapour and gas into the sky and down onto the city, although a major evacuation wasn't necessary in this case.

The Andean climate varies widely according to altitude, the time of year, and even the time of day. There are just two seasons: dry (June-Sept) and wet (Oct-May), although even during April, the wettest month, downpours rarely occur every day. Whatever the time of year though, daytime temperatures hit average highs of 20-22°C (68-72°F) and lows of 7-8°C (45-46°F), though there is huge local variation.

Below the snow line of the highest Andean peaks, is a slender margin of tundra-like gelodifitia , where little more than mosses and lichens can survive the freezing nights and frigid soils. From around 4700m to 3100m, the climate of the páramo is less harsh, allowing for a wider range of flora and fauna. Covering ten percent of Ecuador's total land area, the vegetation is dominated by dense tussocks of Festuca or Calamgrostis grasses, along with some terrestrial bromeliads and ferns. In the wetter páramo areas, pockets of Polylepis forest grow, one of the few trees that can survive at this altitude. Plants tend to have small thick leaves to resist the nightly frosts and waxy skins that reflect the intense ultraviolet radiation during cloudless spells. Páramo soil is sodden, and excess water collects in the hundreds of lakes that spangle the undulating scenery. The first signs of wildlife also emerge in the páramo with mammals such as the Andean spectacled bear, the South American fox and white-tailed deer, and a number of birds including the Andean condor, the Andean snipe, the tawny antpitta and a variety of hummingbirds.

Lower than the páramo are the cloudforests , masking the sierra in dense vegetation between 1800m and 3500m. Wet, green, vibrant and extraordinarily beautiful, cloudforests feel like the kind of prehistoric habitat of predatory dinosaurs. Streaked by silvery waterfalls, the forests are shrouded in heavy mists for at least part of each day, as moisture from the lowland forests rises, cools and condenses. It's this dampness that creates such lush conditions giving rise to an abundance of epiphytes (from the Greek for "upon plants"), such as lichens, liverworts, mosses, ferns and bromeliads , which drape over the trees, densely packed together with knotty trunks and dark coloured bark. They aren't parasites, but simply claim a branch space, set out roots and grow there as independent canopy residents. Many orchids are epiphytes, preferring moss covered branches or exposed bark to normal soil - harbouring over 3500 species, Ecuador is thought to have more orchids than any other country in the world. In a ten-square kilometre patch of eastern cloudforest alone, two hundred orchids have been counted, only a little under Kenya's countrywide total.

Cloudforests are also home to an incredible range of animals, including woolly tapirs, spectacled bears and pumas and they have an exceptional level of bird endemism - species unique to a place and not found anywhere else. At higher altitudes, the cloudforest is called elfin forest because the trees are restricted in growth by the permanent mist cover that blocks out the sunlight. Elfin forests are an impenetrably dense tangle of short, twisted, gnarled trees barely two metres tall.

The El Niño effect
Nature's footnote to the end of the last millennium, the 1997-98 El Niño wreaked havoc with global climate patterns and brought chaos to the world. In Ecuador alone, floods and landslides killed more than 220 people and made 30,000 families homeless. The infrastructure, too, was severely damaged as the storms washed away more than 1600km of main roads, 11,000km of secondary roads and over fifty bridges. In the worst affected coastal areas, cases of hepatitis, cholera, malaria and dengue fever escalated. As all the Pacific countries affected by El Niño pick up the pieces, conservative estimates of the cost of reparation is at around US$20 billion.

The phenomenon itself is no new thing. Records document such events over 400 years ago, but it was only in the 1960s that the Norwegian meteorologist, Jacob Bjerknes, identified the processes that lead to an event. He saw that the El Niño - meaning "the Little Boy" or "the Christ Child", a name given by Peruvian fishermen to the body of warm water that would arrive around Christmas - was intimately connected to extremes in the so-called Southern Oscillation , wherein atmospheric pressures between the eastern equatorial Pacific and the Indo-Australian areas behave as a seesaw, the one rising as the other falls.

In "normal" years, easterly trade winds blow across the Pacific, pushing warm surface water westwards towards Indonesia, Australia and the Philippines, where the water becomes about 8°C warmer and about half a metre higher than on the other side of the ocean. Back in the east, the displacement of this water allows the cold, nutrient-rich water, known as the Humboldt or Peru Current, to swell up from the depths along the coast of South America, providing food for countless marine and bird species.

An El Niño event , however, occurs when the trade winds fall off and the layer of warm water in the west laps back across the ocean, warming up the east Pacific and cooling the west. Consequently, air temperatures across the whole of the Pacific begin to even out, tipping the balance of the atmospheric pressure seesaw, which further reduces the strength of the trade winds. Thus the process is enhanced, as warm water continues to build up in the eastern Pacific - bringing with it abnormal amounts of rainfall to coastal South America, whilst also completely starving other areas of precipitation. The warm water also forces the cold Humboldt current and its micro-organisms to deeper levels, effectively removing a vital link in the marine food chain, killing innumerable fish, sea birds and mammals. Meanwhile, the upset in the Southern Oscillation disturbs weather systems around the world, resulting in severe and unexpected weather.

In the past twenty years, El Niño-Southern Oscillation ( ENSO ) events seem to have become stronger, last longer and occur with greater frequency, leading many to suggest that human activity, such as the warming of the earth's atmosphere, through the greenhouse effect, could well be having an influence. If this is true, failure to cut emissions of greenhouse gases may in the end cost the lives and livelihoods of millions of people across the world.

The Oriente
The Oriente represents Ecuador's own piece of the Amazon rainforest , the largest tropical rainforest habitat in the world. It also has the greatest diversity of plants and animals on the planet - its unidentified species of beetles and insects alone are thought to outnumber all of Earth's known animal species. One study has even found that a single hectare of Amazonian forest can contain up to 250 tree species, whereas in Europe and North America the vegetation is considerably more uniform, and only ten different tree species would occupy the same space. Another study has identified more species of ant living on a single tree stump than there are in the whole of the British Isles. The rivers and their banks, too, are home to a fantastic diversity of animals, including nearly 2000 species of fish, plus freshwater dolphins, giant otters, anacondas, alligator-like caimans and many unique birds.

One reason for this extraordinary diversity is its climate , as it never suffers from a lack of heat or a lack of water, with high levels of precipitation all year round, particularly from April to July. Yearly averages are frequently above 2500mm, while in some areas, rainfall passes above 4000mm. Temperatures are pretty consistent, hovering at around 23-26°C (73-79°F) all year.

The coast
The western slopes of the Andes fall away to the coastal region, beginning with a large, fertile lowland river plain that extends for around 150km to a range of hills, which rise up to around 900m and form a ridge about 20km inland from the sea. ...
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Wildlife
Few countries in the world come close to Ecuador for wildlife. Blessed with many thousands of colourful bird and animal species crammed into a relatively small area, Ecuador is a naturalist's dream - bird-watchers alone can rack up a list of several hundred species after only a few days in the forests. To top it all off, a fair number of them are found nowhere else - making Ecuador one of the most biologically important countries on the planet.