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Jardín Botánico
Parque Carolina’s most popular attraction is this peacefully set botanical garden with native habitats covering páramo (high-altitude Andean grasslands), cloud forest, wetlands and other areas, plus an orquideario (orchid greenhouse), ethnobotanical garden (exploring the plants use
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Olmedo monument
Just north of the Mercado Sur is the Olmedo monument honoring José Joaquín de Olmedo (1780-1847) an Ecuadorian poet and the president of the first Ecuadorian territory independent of Spanish rule. Just to the north, outside the Malecóns blue fence, is the sprawling street market kn
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Quito Observatory
Opened by President García Moreno in 1864, this four-sided observatory is the oldest on the continent. It houses a museum of 19th-century pendulums, sextants, chronometers and other historic instruments, and opens for stargazing on Thursday and Friday nights (with sessions at 6pm a
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Museo del Monasterio de las Conceptas
This religious museum in the Convent of the Immaculate Conception, founded in 1599, offers a glimpse into the centuries-old customs of the cloistered nuns who live here. You can’t see the nuns (they’re cloistered, after all) but you can see their primitive bread-making equipment an
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City Cemetery
Incorporated into the city landscape a short ride from the city center is this landmark cemetery, founded in 1823. It contains hundreds of above-ground tombs (and 700,000 graves in total) stacked atop one another so that it resembles a crowded apartment complex. A walkway leads to
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Puerto Chino
The road to El Junco continues across the island to the isolated beach of Puerto Chino (now accessible by an improved paved trail), one of two places where camping is a possibility with permission from the Galápagos National Park office in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. This is one of th
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Casa del Alabado
Housed in a stolid-looking colonial era home, this privately owned museum with contemporary-style displays showcases an impressive collection of pre-Columbian artifacts. Thematically organized around subjects like shamans and the afterlife, explanations in English and Spanish (audi
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Punta Espinoza
Just across Canal Bolívar, Punta Espinoza houses marine iguanas (too many to count) which can be seen sunning themselves on the black lava formations - a dramatic sight that looks like a museum diorama on dinosaurs come to life. Flightless cormorants nest nearby and Galápagos pengu
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La Quinta de Juan Montalvo
This 200-year-old villa was home to Juan Montalvo, the ‘Cervantes of America.’ There’s a tiny but well-done museum dedicated to the author – his house was really small – and the pretty gardens are worth a peek. To get here, cruise southwest along Avenida Miraflores. It’s about a ha
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Casa de las Artes
One of many beautifully restored buildings on this atmospheric street, this cultural center showcases small but well-curated temporary exhibitions. In addition, the finely wrought polychromatic miniatures of 18th-century master sculptor Toribio Ávila, whose work also adorns the sac
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Museo de Arte Religioso
Inside the beautifully restored, 16th-century convent of the Conceptas nuns, Riobamba’s top museum houses one of the country’s finest collections of 17th- and 18th-century religious art. The museum’s signature piece is a priceless, meter-tall monstrance inlaid with more than 1500 p
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Jardín Botánico de Guayaquil
About a half-hour drive north of town near Cerro Colorado, this botanical garden has more than 80 orchid varieties and nearly 700 plant species. Paths and trails lead you past the plant exhibits and tropical birds flutter overhead. There is a gift shop, a café, a butterfly garden a
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Museo Municipal
A block south of Parque Bolívar, you’ll find this museum and the municipal library . The archaeology room on the ground floor has mainly Inca and pre-Inca ceramics, and several figurines from the oldest culture in Ecuador, the Valdivia (c 3200 BC). Also on the ground floor is a col
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Reserva Producción Faunística Cuyabeno
This beautiful reserve is a unique flooded rainforest covering 6034 sq km around Río Cuyabeno. Seasonally inundated with water, the flooded forest provides a home to diverse aquatic species and birdlife. Macrolobium and ceiba treetops thrust out from the underwater forest, creating
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Highlands Lava Tubes
These underground tunnels are more than 1km (0.6mi) in length and were formed when the outside skin of a molten-lava flow solidified. When the flow ceased, the molten lava kept moving inside, emptying out of the skin and leaving tunnels. Theyre on private property and can be visite
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Museo de la Ciudad
Just past the 18th-century arch, Arco de la Reina , built to give shelter to churchgoers, this first-rate museum depicts Quito’s daily life through the centuries, with displays including dioramas, model indigenous homes and colonial kitchens. The 1563 building itself (a former hosp
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Parque Vicente León
Most action tends to center on this main plaza. At the southeast corner of the plaza stands the republican-era town hall , topped by a pair of stone condors. On the south side stands the colonial-style cathedral ; on an exterior wall to the left of the main entrance is an interesti
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Interpretation Center
This modern and easily digestable center explains the history and significance of the Galápagos better than anywhere else in the country. Exhibits deal with the biology, geology and human history of the islands - it deserves a visit even if youve been inundated with facts from boat
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Capilla de Cantuña
The Cantuña Chapel houses a small art collection from the Quito School. It’s also shrouded in one of Quito’s most famous legends, that of the indigenous builder Cantuña, who supposedly sold his soul so the devil would help him complete the church on time. But just before midnight o
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Volcán Wolf
Not only is Isla Isabela the largest Galápagos island, but its imposing skyline of grumbling volcanoes makes it the most striking. Volcán Wolf is the highest point in the Galápagos, standing at 1707m (5600ft), and is one of the most active volcanos on the archipelago - young lava c
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