Despite being one of the smallest countries in South America, Ecuador packs in a lot of variety from a travel and adventue perspective and distance-wise, everything's relatively close.

Using Quito as our base we managed to take in the spectacular Galapagos Islands (actually the main reason for travelling to South America on our honeymoon).Followed by mountain biking in the Andes and an Amazon Basin trip ... it's hard to beat a line-up like that!

Many of the volcanoes in Ecuador are still active and eruptions are a regular occurrence that make the news. It makes you appreciate that we are still living on the surface of a volatile inner-planet.

Maybe one day we'll return to climb the volcanoes again. Missing out on summitting Mount Cotopaxi was a bitter pill to swallow but an important lesson in turning back when conditions are not right.