The Sierra (Ecuadorian Andes) is known for delicious home-style cooking, stunning countryside, and vibrant festivals. The native people of the Sierra often speak Quichua and Spanish, dress in dark wool clothing with bright additions like shawls, ponchos, or embroidered blouses. Often, you can tell the ethnicity of a person simply by their style of hat.
Even Ecuadorians don’t always list the Galapagos as a region. After all, it stands alone several hundred kilometres east of the continent in the Pacific Ocean. But we like to mention it as a region for a couple of reasons. First, some people don’t know that the Galapagos is a part of Ecuador! Second, while some parts of the Galapagos Islands remind us of the mainland (like the towns and cities), it is nothing like coastal Ecuador.
La Costa, Ecuador, on the western coast, stretches from a broad coastal plain to the foothills of the Andes in the east. Most of the world’s bananas are grown here. Tourism along the La Costa (Pacific Coast) was severely hampered by the earthquake centred around Manta, Pedernales, and Puerto Viejo in April 2016. Only recently have these communities seen a renewed interest from international tourists as they return to sunbathe on wide, sandy beaches, surf choppy waters, and eat the best seafood dishes around.
