Ludwig Bemelmans , The Donkey Inside (o/p). Classic travel narrative based on the author's travels through Ecuador in the 1940s. A little old-fashioned and conservative, but masterfully written and a lively read.

 

Joe Fisher , Cotopaxi Visions (Quarry Press). Pacy, picaresque account of the author's quest for self-discovery and spiritual ecstasy in the Ecuadorian Andes in the 1970s. An entertaining read, even if you don't share Fisher's mystical tendencies.

Albert Franklin , Ecuador (o/p). An affectionate and perceptive portrait of Ecuador in the early 1940s, as it stood, in the author's words, "at the threshold between the feudal world and the modern world". Highly readable, and worth ordering from your library before you head out there.

Toby Green , Saddled with Darwin : A Journey through South America (Phoenix). Elegantly written and loaded with wonderful anecdotes, this is an account of a madcap undertaking to follow Darwin's travels across South America on horseback. The fact that the author can't ride is only one of the obstacles he finds himself up against.

Grace Halsell , Los Viejos: Secrets of Long Life from the Sacred Valley (o/p). In 1974 the author set off to live in Vilcabamba - in the supposed "valley of eternal youth" - for a year to try to find out what allowed its residents to live useful, meaningful and active lives well into old age. An engaging glimpse of Vilcabamba before the arrival of the tourist boom.

Peter Lourie , Sweat of the Sun, Tears of the Moon (Grafton Books/University of Nebraska Press). Gripping account of the modern-day treasure seekers intent on retrieving Atahualpa's ransom from the Llanganate mountains, written by a young American who became embroiled in their obsessions in the 1980s.

Henri Michaux , Ecuador (o/p in UK and US; Gallimard, France). Beautifully written - and sometimes ether-induced - impressions of Ecuador, based on the mystical Belgian author's travels through the country in 1977, and presented in a mixture of prose, poetry and diary notes.

Tom Miller , The Panama Hat Trail (o/p). Blending lively travel narrative with investigative journalism, this engaging book tracks the historical and geographical course of the Panama hat from the toquilla fields of the lowlands to the hat exporters and the boutiques of the United States.

Blair Niles , Casual Wanderings in Ecuador (o/p). Light-hearted travel narrative from an affable author who toured the country in the 1920s, stumbling on many of today's favourite tourist spots, such as Baños and the Devil's Nose. The super photos make this a real socio-historic document.

Richard Poole , The Inca Smiled (o/p). Sensitive and enjoyable account of the author's two-year stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in Riobamba in the late 1960s, raising thought-provoking questions about aid, development and poverty.

Paul Theroux , The Old Patagonian Express (Penguin/Houghton Mifflin). Theroux's cranky but entertaining account of his railway odyssey through the Americas includes a chapter on the time he spent in Quito (which he liked) and Guayaquil (which he hated), attempting, and failing, to take the famous train ride between the two.

Moritz Thomsen , Living Poor (Eland/University of Washington Press). An American Peace Corps volunteer writes lucidly about his time in the fishing community of Río Verde in Esmeraldas during the 1960s, and his mostly futile - and sometimes farcical - efforts to haul its people out of intransigent poverty. Thomsen never left Ecuador and followed this book with three other autobiographical works - Farm on the River of Emeralds (UK: Barrie & Jenkins/o/p), The Saddest Pleasure (US: Graywolf) and My Two Wars (US: Steerforth) - before dying in a squalid apartment in Guayaquil in 1991. He refused to help himself, even though he had a shoe-box full of uncashed royalty cheques worth $40,000.

Richard Wingate , Lost Outpost of Atlantis (o/p). Fast-paced chronicle of the author's attempts to prove that South America was colonized by the mythical civilization of Atlantis, based on the discovery of thousands of artefacts buried in caves in the Oriente. A good read, if slightly barking.